Whooooahhhhh... Labour is in a wobble. If the May 1 election results are bad, Gordon Brown's leadership itself could come under threat. They are wobbling already at the House of Commons, they are wobbling at No 10. They are wobbling in City Hall, in Labour HQ, in constituencies up and down the country.

How to stop the wobble, when it goes all the way up to the commander-in-chief? When the Labour MP Chris Mole, a man who resigned as a parliamentary aide in the attempted coup against Tony Blair in 2006, stood up at the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) last week and told Mr Brown to get out there on to the Richard and Judy sofa and explain who he is, because the public don't know, he was speaking for many Labour MPs as well.

Who is this man, they are asking; do we know him at all? Does he know us? What is your instinct for Britain, Gordon? Are you, for instance, the man who champions the poor, or are you the man hitting them now with the abolition of the 10p tax band? The amounts lost by childless low earners in this week's tax changes are relatively small - about £230 a year at most - and relatively easily defended. They certainly do not warrant the rebellion Mr Brown is facing from mainstream Labour MPs. But the confrontation has become symbolic of far more: of Mr Brown's loss of contact with his party, and its sudden collapse of faith in him.

He hasn't been strong and he hasn't been straight, the two qualities MPs thought they were getting in their new Prime Minister. They might not have liked Mr Blair much, but they know how he would have handled this problem. He would have told his MPs: “Look, we know this is tough on some, but this is why we have done it. Government is about choosing priorities. You want to make a leadership issue of this in the run-up to the local elections? You want to give that gift to the Conservatives? I am not backing down.” Where is the Blairite certainty, the ruthlessness, the conviction, in Mr Brown? Instead, he wobbled, promising to look into it, seeming to promise a review, then retracting and reverting to the “difficult long-term decisions” version of Gordon.

Mr Brown keeps reminding me of one of those wobbly Russian dolls - the ones where you peel away the layers to find... exactly the identical doll underneath, only smaller. They may look good from a distance but the closer you get, the less recognisable they are; too smooth, nothing to grip on to, a funny shape. A little grotesque, in fact. And the paint is chipping off.

Last week, for instance, newspapers were comprehensively briefed about a “fightback plan” presented to the Cabinet and written by Mr Brown's new strategy chief, Stephen Carter, a marketing man. Was this to be the new Gordon? The plan had five areas of “deliverables” and “ideas”: immigration, crime, the economy, the NHS and families. None of them sounds much like an idea to me, and nor are the themes new. As to whether they are “deliverables”, hasn't Labour been talking about delivering on these for ten years now? What does it mean?

There was a similar sense of déjà vu about Mr Brown's declaration on public services at his monthly press conference last week. The next stage in reform, he said, is clear: the first was investment; the second, choice; the third, now, personalising services. But wasn't stage three supposed to be part of stage two? Déjà vu again in the “dividing lines”, also briefed to the Cabinet and newspapers last week: stability versus risk, better public services versus big spending cuts, and leadership versus salesmanship. If this is the best the new marketing men in No 10 can come up with, they are not very good - please not a stale old ding-dong about who will spend half a billion less here, £25 million there. These are old themes for an older time.

I thought that Nick Clegg put it well in an interview with The Times last week: we have bided our time, he said, to give all that extra money time to work. Now we have to ask: why are outcomes not better? Why hasn't social mobility improved? Why are the people at the bottom of the pile still so untouched? Labour ministers know this is what they should be asking too, but are afraid of conceding any failure, and of the natural Brownite solution: higher taxes.

So we have lots of wobbly action, no progress. By chance yesterday I saw on the No 10 website: “News - April 2 - PM helps householders go green.” Curious, I followed it down: “Mr Brown joined Environment Secretary Hilary Benn at the west London home of Maud Mansfield with an Energy Savings Trust energy doctor to look at energy efficiency, water use and waste reduction measures...” What was the Prime Minister doing there? Checking the plumbing? He is tinkering with PR trinkets and energy-saving light bulbs when the house is burning down.

And it is: make no mistake. Despite recognising that Mr Cameron has no solid alternative to offer, some on the Labour benches have given up on power already - prematurely, I think. The next leadership contest is under way. Even the Prime Minister's staff, his inner core, is breaking up, deserting him in spirit if not actually in body, and leaving him in the hands of the marketing men he has chosen to give him a new lick of paint.

But each time is just another patch-up job; the paint will come off again, and more quickly every time. Strip down to the next layer and - ah. That's it. There isn't any more: just a tiny facsimile left of the original. And oh dear, look, it's so small, it has fallen over.

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