As our Prime Minister began reading out the names of the dead at Prime Minister’s Questions this Wednesday, a terrible thought occurred to me. “This he can do.”

He was doing it well. Gordon Brown has a fine bass voice, and in the solemnity of remembrance his delivery found pace, rhythm and a kind of calm. He sounded, for a moment, comfortable.

I don’t mean he likes doing it; I don’t mean he does not grieve as any flesh-and-blood human would. I don’t even mean that a public-spirited politician could find conscious relief in reciting a list of recent British casualties in a cruel and inconclusive conflict.

I mean that when everything is coming apart in a man’s career and unanswerable questions fly at him from all quarters, the High Church automaticity of locking on to and intoning a familiar text — beyond question or interruption, beyond variation, beyond meaning — must offer some grisly if unsought-for respite. Those 37 names on Wednesday seemed almost like rosary beads. Note how this Prime Minister aches to pepper his speeches with numbers, figures, statistics; often almost meaningless, but comforting for the solidity they seem to offer in a fluid world.

For the 13 minutes of PMQs remaining after the list was completed, however, Mr Brown had to return to the business of government. And it is here that he, and therefore his country, is now so frighteningly adrift. Is anybody running the Government this autumn? Is anybody in power?

The British electorate have an intuitive grasp of politics, but there’s one misunderstanding to which the generality is prone: to think driving a country would be like driving a car. Your eye would be constantly and intelligently on the road ahead; miss the brake, let your foot slip, jerk the wheel, or turn round to argue with the passengers, and you’d crash.

The truth is different. As those who acquire power discover to their dismay, the controls are mushy and indirect, and the machine will run on, driverless, for some time. In the harsh light of experience, the illusion that a British Cabinet is in day-to-day control cracks.

But as it cracks, what seems to be revealed — that leadership is a mirage and makes no difference — is also an illusion. Paralysis at the top will paralyse the whole machine, but stealthily, and over a long time. It takes months or years for the atrophy to spread. But then people do notice.

Atrophy is now the defining characteristic of the British Government. Mr Brown’s colleagues know, and say. Senior civil servants know and say, too. That the public and its news media know is betrayed more subtly: by disregard. We no longer bother to rebut the Prime Minister’s improbable claims, or dispute his wacky ideas. There’s no point. As a political force he is disintegrating, and will be gone soon enough. But not for half a year, and not before some important decisions are needed. Yet confidence that he can take them is ebbing away.

Some examples, both serious and trivial: first, a trivial one. “Starting now,” said Mr Brown to his conference in Brighton three weeks ago, “and right across the next Parliament, every one of the 50,000 most chaotic families will be part of a family intervention project . . .”

It took hardly a nanosecond to realise that this was a ludicrous undertaking on many levels. It certainly wouldn’t be starting “now”. What is this new “project”? Where did he get the figure of 50,000 “most chaotic families” from? Absurd. But was there a belly laugh from the media? A roar of support from his party? No. Delegates carried on with their knitting, while the ghosts of smiles flickered across the faces of journalists. “One more thing that isn’t going to happen,” we thought.

Now a more serious case of impotence: the Post Office. Peter Mandelson himself — the responsible minister — said on Thursday that trade unionists had “a death wish”. The Royal Mail’s life is indeed threatened. The root of the problem is, as just described, an uncertain hand, or no hand, at the wheel for more than a year, with Lord Mandelson himself forced to back away from part-privatisation plans when no support from No 10 was forthcoming. Gradually, as management looked lonelier, union intransigence grew. A strike is imminent — now, long before any general election. Our unified postal service may never recover.

Nor is this paralysis an inevitable response to a lame-duck Government. The Cabinet could be as tough as it wishes because all sides know the next Government will, if anything, be tougher. A Prime Minister could bind both opposition leaders into a common position tomorrow. But Mr Brown is incapable of this.

Back to the trivial. “From now on,” Mr Brown told his Brighton conference, “all 16 and 17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.” But this is astonishing, isn’t it? Where are these workhouses? Have you seen any young parents carted away yet?

There was a splutter of indignation, but no campaign. That William Hague should actually have attacked the plan recently was almost eccentric. Why was he bothered? Mr Brown isn’t going to do it — ever, let alone “from now on”.

Afghanistan needs only to be named for the British drift, and its human cost, to leap to mind. What is the policy? What are the Prime Minister’s instincts? Even as a poodle he faces a dilemma that he shows no sign of confronting. Which part of a divided US Administration is he to poodle to — the Pentagon, or the President? Which way will he jump? Mr Brown hates such decisions.

On MPs’ expenses we see the same indecision. As so often Mr Brown has fallen into the displacement activity of backing (or commissioning) inquiries: so many that the inquiries are beginning to fight among themselves. Everyone — press, public, and Parliament — is now thoroughly confused, but critically missing has been leadership from the top. As Labour MPs attacked their leader this week, he was voicing his support for the Legg inquiry; while the former Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, whom Mr Brown first supported and then (effectively) sacked, was being flattered by ermine in the House of Lords. What’s the narrative here?

We are adrift. “Yes,” one senior Cabinet minister remarked when urged to provoke a leadership contest by resigning, “I could pull the plug. But would the water leave the bath?” Even in gravity itself, it seems, all confidence has fled.

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