Oh Gord. Can we take another two years of this? Anything - anything - would be better than the plan confected by the coalition of cowards and egotists that the Labour Party, MPs and ministers alike, has become.

They didn't allow a contest to choose their next leader; now they want a contest, maybe, but not for a bit in case the result turns out even more scary than things are now. Everyone with influence on this decision appears to be working not in the interests of the country but in their own interests - from those who would be leader but not of a party likely to lose, to those trying to protect their seats by waiting a bit longer to see if things improve before really, really panicking and demanding a new leader, through to those in No 10 unable to see beyond their stubborn determination that they can turn things around just by sitting firm.

They cannot. An administration that everyone from backbenchers to truckers now dares to hold to ransom cannot manage a way through the next two years. I cannot see any difficulty at all in sorting out the current row over additional fuel and car taxes. And were I in No 10, I would be perfectly comfortable making the case for dumping them both, and still touting my credentials for being as green as the next girl.

It is a sign of how twisted this Government has been under Gordon Brown's leadership, so lacking in clarity and coherence, that it no longer has the ability to cut through the smog. Pilloried for a U-turn on the new 10p tax rate that was both expensive and entirely ineffectual, sneered at for lacking any coherent ideology, mocked for tacking to the latest whim of the voters and of any protesting Labour MP who gives a quote to a Sunday paper, the Government seems stuck in a quagmire of indecision. If this is moral compass, I'm the North Pole.

I wouldn't normally have much sympathy with fuel protesters, either private drivers or hauliers. The truckers can and should pass on the transport costs to their customers. Once you start allowing an “essential-user rebate” on fuel, as they are demanding - 25p a litre, no less! - where do you draw the line? Nurses, teachers, emergency services, night workers, any commuter from a rural area who needs to drive to the railway station, the mother taking her children to school in an area without public transport... we could most of us claim essential usage of one form or another.

The 2p duty increase due in October is different. It has already been deferred once and the Government could do so again. It isn't a U-turn: the Chancellor simply announces that when, in March, he declared that the increase would go ahead in October, fuel prices were expected to have fallen by then. Instead, they have shot up higher. If there is no fall in prices before the autumn, the fuel duty increase will be deferred again. It is an honest solution to a real problem not of the Government's making. The achingly high price of fuel is punishment enough for the motorist today - take it from someone who doesn't live in a city and does need to drive on a daily basis.

The other tax causing anguish - to Labour backbenchers although not yet to most drivers - is the hidden increase in vehicle excise duty on “gas-guzzling” cars first registered after spring 2001. This puzzles me a little, as I repeatedly read that MPs are upset because it is going to hit poorer families who own older cars. But seven years is not old for a car, at least not outside London and other high-status areas. Most poorer families, if they own a car at all, will own one that is older than seven years and not hit by the £200 tax rise. It seems more likely that the tax will strike slightly wealthier families - politically damaging, yes, but not financially devastating. If the Treasury is to start giving into pressure from every MP afraid of losing votes in his or her seat, we are in for a really dangerous two years.

Yet no matter what the truth about the victims of this tax, it should be deferred anyway. It is dishonest, stealthy and unfair. It is wrong to impose a tax with retrospective effect on people who have already bought a car relying on knowing roughly the future level of taxation on it. Nor does it help to change behaviour, as the same car becomes impossible to sell in favour of a greener alternative. “Sorry, we made a mistake” would do just fine here.

The Government is too stuck to do it just like that. Instead, it will dither and hint and change it in the end anyway. Driving taxes are a toxic subject, as Mr Brown will remember from the fuel protests of 2000. All of us want to be good and green, but the cost of petrol is squeezing enough already. I wouldn't want to be a minister in a government that hiked it up further now.

There are big arguments to be had for dramatic shifts in lifestyle and in the tax system, but a Government bogged down with day-to-day survival will not make them. For instance, the proposal from MPs for a system of tradeable personal carbon allowances, as backed by David Miliband when Environment Secretary, deserved more than the cold shoulder it received from environment ministers yesterday. But nothing can be done while every MP can hold the Government to ransom, and while each decision or lack of one is read as a judgment upon the survival of the Prime Minister.

The coverage of Mr Brown's premiership has almost reached the critical mass that forced Sir Menzies Campbell's retirement as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Labour MPs might like to note that his replacement with a charismatic young moderniser has done absolutely nothing for the revival of the Liberal Democrats.

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