The Labour Party is suffering, as it has suffered since 1994, from sacrificing its reputation as a party of principle. Tony Blair’s “Third Way” was, at best, an attempt to cobble together what he believed to be in the immediate national interest. At worst, it was no more than a brilliant device for winning elections.

Calls to move the party out of the soggy centre ground of politics were always rejected with warnings that to take up a more progressive position would lose votes. The “project” was rarely defended on its merits. Winning became new Labour’s guiding philosophy. Now that victory is in doubt, the vestigial survivors of Blairism have no pole star to guide them. They are like characters from a Graham Greene novel: having lost their faith, they wait, with resentful resignation, for inevitable death.

These are desperate days for Labour and no one who wishes the party well should pretend otherwise. But, although the odds favour a Tory victory in next year’s election, the result is still not certain. Conservative support is fragile — based more on dislike of the Government than on admiration for the Opposition. David Cameron lacks substance and the more he is forced to describe his policies, the less attractive they appear. Delegates congregating in Brighton for Labour’s annual conference must wonder what the opinion polls would reveal if their leaders had taken the fight to the enemy and argued that the economic crisis vindicates social democratic criticism of the market economy.

Unfortunately, some Cabinet ministers do not accept the social democratic prescription and rather more assume that defeat is now inevitable. It is not. Conferences are designed as opportunities for beleaguered leaderships to inspire the dispirited rank and file with belief in victory. At Brighton the process has to be reversed. The “floor” must convince the “platform” that all is not lost — that social democracy can provide a winning formula. And the persistently faint-hearted have to be taught that, even if their pessimism is justified, they champion a cause that it is worth defending in the last ditch.

Some of the most vocal demands for a change in direction come from superannuated ministers who want a return to what they have convinced themselves were the glory days of Mr Blair. That was the era when voters began to ask the damning question: “But what does Labour believe in?” At Brighton, party members will have more sense than to take advice from dissidents who are, at least in part, motivated by personal animus towards the Prime Minister. Gordon Brown’s future is irrelevant to the hopes of change in Labour’s policy, performance and prospects — not because he is beyond improvement but because he is not going to resign, and an attempt to force him out would produce a bloodletting that makes defeat certain.

Mr Brown has not behaved like the high-minded radical that his supporters, among whom I numbered, expected him to be. The man who promised to move away from government by press release has wasted his time sending messages of condolence to the husband of a dead reality-show “star” and support to a talent-contest finalist.

Incredibly, he did not realise that association with such tawdry nonsense undermined his justified reputation as the man who, in President Obama’s words, “led the world out of recession”. But arguments about his future only divert attention from what really needs to be done.

Labour’s problem does not lie with Gordon Brown alone. Even the best and most successful of Cabinet ministers seem reluctant to talk about the principles that should define the Labour Party, ought to divide it from the Conservatives and could be the rock on which the next election campaign is built. Alistair Darling — notable for keeping his head when all around were losing theirs and blaming it on him — spoke in Cardiff, a couple of weeks ago, about the limitations of ruthless individualism.

Alan Johnson has argued for holding a polling day ballot on the desirability of “electoral reform” — an initiative apparently opposed by colleagues despite possessing the advantage of being both popular and right. But when did either of them — or, for that matter, Jack Straw, David Milliband, Ed Balls and Shaun Woodward, make a swingeing attack on the Tories and all they stand for? They have defended their own departmental policies. But none of them has made a speech — and thereby filled a vacuum that has been left by the Prime Minister — which begins with a phrase essential to Labour’s prospects. “This is what we believe . . .”

Labour has not even won the battle for trivial headlines. David Cameron, proving that it is possible to be both very rich and very cheap, has outsmarted the Government day after day. As most newspapers take a Tory victory for granted, the initiative is hard to seize.

Conviction politicians struggle to “change the weather”, in the words of Joseph Chamberlain. For the past few months Labour has not had enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Alan Duncan, the one-time Shadow Leader of the House and in charge of Tory policies for derailing the House of Commons gravy train, said foolish things about MPs living on “rations” and the problem of attracting talent to what he clearly regards as a low-wage occupation.

Labour should have enjoyed a field day. Instead it watched and waited until Mr Cameron belatedly sacked him and turned what should have been a major embarrassment into a minor triumph.

Politicians who believe in something instinctively fight back. But, to amend the old analogy, if the run-up to the election were a boxing match, the referee would stop the contest not because Labour was receiving so much punishment but because it refused to come out of its corner. The party is facing a crisis of personal courage, confidence and conviction — not of social democratic policy. If the worst were to happen in May, some of us would make sure that the blame was laid on the politicians, not the winning idea that they have ignored.

It is not too late to escape from the Government’s failure to assert a belief in a different and better society. But time is running out. Mr Brown can redeem two years of missed opportunities by speaking at last about freedom and equality. If his nerve fails, it will be up to the rank and file to prove that the Labour Party still stands for something.

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