Do you remember Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko? Perhaps not. But he held a most important post. In title, anyway. He was, for just 13 months until March 1985, the leader of the Soviet Union. In title, anyway.

Every Thursday morning, says one sad witness, Chernenko's soon-to-be successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, “would sit in his office like a little orphan nervously awaiting a telephone call from the sick Chernenko: would he come to the Politburo himself or would he ask Gorbachev to stand in for him this time again?”

At his predecessor's funeral, Chernenko “could barely read the eulogy. Those present strained to catch the meaning of what he was trying to say. He spoke rapidly, swallowed his words, kept coughing and stopped repeatedly to wipe his lips and forehead. He ascended Lenin's Mausoleum by way of a newly installed escalator and descended with the help of two bodyguards.”

And now, it appears, another living waxwork is to join the grisly ranks in modern history. Another sweating, stumbling shell of a political career, drained of power or genius, impelled and sustained only by anger and pride. Another brittle, prickly carapace gone all squishy inside, surrounded by a plotting politburo, theoretically able to launch nuclear weapons, attend international summits, pat the heads of schoolchildren and kiss the hands of popes and monarchs, but disconnected from the control of anything the Government actually does.

At most, Gordon Brown now has a shade less time left to him than Chernenko. After the 24 hours that lie behind us, the prospect for him of the 12 months that lie ahead is no less pitiable. The prospect for his party is wretched. For his country the prospect is just dispiriting. As I write Mr Brown is supposed to be conducting a press conference. But he hasn't appeared. In theory his conference started an hour ago. This hour just past will almost certainly be the best bit.

This is pathetic. This is toe-curlingly awful. This is so abjectly, senselessly broken-backed that it almost isn't interesting to watch. I've seen poisoned rats die slowly, too, and after a while the spectacle loses the appeal even of the macabre.

It is also an act of supreme selfishness on Mr Brown's part. Wrapping himself like some wingless albatross around his administration's throat, starving his own colleagues of oxygen in his mindless determination that other careers should not live in order that his should not die, he has brought his Government and his party to the ground, broken their legs - and yet still will not release his grip. They must crawl on, shackled together, past the humiliation of Thursday's elections and onward for another year: plans jettisoned, policies stalled, Bills postponed, shelving everything bold, all in the name of mere survival. Mr Brown's survival. Never mind Labour's, never mind the future of progressive politics, never mind the ideas and spirits of capable men and women in and around his Cabinet.

From the corner of my eye I see that the Prime Minister has joined his press conference. He is standing at the podium, waving his arms and saying repeatedly “look”. Deathly pale and grinning waxily - that disembodied smile robbed, it almost seems, from another discarded dummy - he is moving and talking with sort of desperate swagger. Across the bottom of my television screen a moving strap conveys breaking news. “Alan Sugar to join Lords.” “Look,” says Mr Brown, “when the fight is on you don't quit...” “Conservatives gain Staffordshire”. “...I've an excellent team...” “Caroline Flint resigns.” “...She's done a very good job... ” “Geoff Hoon resigns.” “...And there's work to be done...” “Margaret Beckett to leave the Government.”

“I don't think anyone can say that Glenys Kinnock hasn't done important work as an MEP,” he says, as if anyone was saying that. “Conservatives gain Derbyshire.” “Ever since I was a boy,” he begins his spiel on Values. “Conservatives gain Nottinghamshire.” Mr Brown attempts feeble joshing with a Talk Sport reporter. “I suppose you're asking about the Lions tour?” “Labour's Dr Ian Gibson to resign his seat and fight a by-election.”If only for those of us who watch and comment on British politics to hold on to our own sanity, surely it is necessary to believe that this cannot continue? And yet I fear it can. Surely the Labour Party - parliamentary, nationwide and in the trade unions - can see that what is at stake extends beyond an unavoidable defeat at the next election and into the first few critical years in opposition? Can they really believe that this is the man to take them across the threshold and into that renewal? Are they looking at the polls? Are they noting that they are rapidly joining the ranks of the fringe parties? Can they not picture those future election counts in which the Labour Party candidate stands among candidates from the BNP, the “Let's Have A Party” Party, and the tall transgender lady with the flashing nipples?

Within less than a decade Labour could become a regional party... “Conservatives gain Lancashire”... a regional party without a region.

Look, as Mr Brown would say, I know that you know that I'm a Tory. And you must know that I rate David Cameron, and believe he can and will be a successful prime minister. And so you may wonder (and I know some Labour MPs who may read me do wonder) if my railing against Gordon Brown is some kind of a Tory bluff. If getting rid of him would strengthen, maybe save, the Labour Party, they reason, why would Parris argue to get rid of him?

It's a reasonable question. I've asked it of myself. There was a moment in the small hours of yesterday morning when I said to myself: “Crikey, it really is going to happen. He's sinking. And Alan Johnson really is going to take over. And for a few months Mr Johnson might dance a pretty dance, and Labour's fortunes might recover. ‘Plucky, modest, fair-minded English working-class waif-made-good takes on smoothie-chops Etonian' - here's a media narrative that for a season at least could fly...”

And I worried that by recommending Mr Johnson I might prove complicit in a Tory downfall.

So be it, because it's what I think. Gordon Brown will take Labour into oblivion. If Alan Sugar is the answer, then the Prime Minister is asking the wrong question.

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