Saying sorry is a good start, even if Gordon Brown was prompted by an earlier apology yesterday from Jack Straw. But what does Mr Brown say on Friday and do afterwards? Labour is heading for a bad day even if, at the very best, the party does no worse than in 2004, in itself a poor year.

There are two opposite reactions, both wrong. The first is to pretend that nothing has really happened and that it is just a normal mid-term setback. You can easily imagine that message being texted around ministers as the line to use. The second is to panic, to signal big changes in policy and personnel.

Mr Brown hates admitting that he has made a mistake. By concentrating on how much overall the Government had done to reduce child and pensioner poverty, he underestimated, and failed to acknowledge, the number of losers from the 10p tax change. The length of time before he admitted the problem has caused the main damage to his standing with Labour MPs.

The first rule of public life is to show that you are listening to voters, not seeming to snub them. Tony Blair was a past master of the “I feel your pain” Bill Clinton school of political empathy. Remember back in June 2001, after his second victory on a much reduced turnout, when Mr Blair said he had been given an “instruction to deliver”.

Or in May 2005, after the third win, when he said: “I have listened and I have learnt. And I think I have a very clear idea of what the British people now expect from this Government for a third term”. That act wore thin with repetition.

So, first, contrition, as Mr Brown was hinting at yesterday, but this should not mean panic. Forget nonsense about Mr Brown going. That would be political suicide. Mr Blair made a big error two years ago in reshuffling his Cabinet on the Friday as the results from very poor local election results were coming in. This reinforced an impression of weakness, not authority. It would be mad for Mr Brown to reshuffle his team soon. There is no evidence that such ministerial changes make any impact on voters, nor do they usually affect a Government's performance.

So, apart from a touch of humility, should it be just business as usual? Not quite. No doubt Stephen Carter and his team are applying their business backgrounds to undertake a risk assessment of likely problems. In other words, avoid potholes in the road ahead, and do not make them deeper. So defuse the 42-day detention row unless you really believe you can win. That needs to be linked to less micro-management from the centre, one of the main complaints of Cabinet ministers. Mr Brown needs to let his ministers get on with their jobs.

Otherwise, Mr Brown was right yesterday to stress the economy and protecting people concerned about fuel bills, food prices, and their homes, though there is little the Government can do. He wanted “to steer the British economy in such a way that the people of Britain can believe that the problems we see in America will not come to Britain”.

Labour's only hope is to be able to point to the end of economic bad times and say that Britain has emerged less damaged than other countries. That may not happen until late 2009, though even then any recovery may be ambiguous. It will be a dour, long haul up to a 2010 election.

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