Gordon Brown’s fate largely depends on factors outside his control. He has few options available to restore his political authority. Neither he, nor the Government, has much influence on the length of the economic slowdown, nor on food and energy prices. All that can be done is to hope and wait, and to seek, as Mr Brown is trying to do, to alleviate some of the adverse impact.

The Government is, for example, encouraging banks to resume lending (through the Bank of England’s action to ease liquidity problems) and providing advice to people facing housing repossessions.

Other measures – such as the much trumpeted big expansion of shared-equity deals to help first-time homebuyers – will not of themselves revive the housing market. And backing pressure by the competition authorities on supermarkets over their prices will make no difference in the immediate future.

The Government cannot do more partly for a reason that Mr Brown hates to admit: that there is little freedom of manoeuvre on public spending and borrowing. His claim that “we’ve run the public finances well and have low debt, so that unlike other countries we’re able to borrow in this period of economic difficulty to see us through” is very one-sided.

The big rise in spending this decade has boosted borrowing to unsustainable levels. Current spending plans should be all right, but there is no leeway to do anything more, and borrowing will have to be cut substantially when good times return.

One immediate consequence is that there is no money available either to reverse or substantially modify the abolition of the 10p tax band. The former would cost £7.4 billion. All that will, or can, happen is some limited help to the main losers. Alistair Darling has already promised an early announcement on help for women pensioners aged 60 to 64 who do not qualify for pension credit. This could come this month. But it is much harder to identify or compensate other losers, such as low-income, childless households not within the working tax credit.

The real danger is that the Government will find it hard to resist calls for relaxing spending controls and public sector pay limits in order to respond to the worries of Labour MPs and core working-class voters. Postponing the 2p fuel duty rise this autumn has an obvious electoral appeal though it would send a bad fiscal and green signal. Such a relaxation would undermine Mr Brown’s reputation for fiscal prudence.

The other part of Mr Brown’s response is to outline a vision for the future. He is correct that the Government has to show it is not running out of steam. But I doubt whether the publication of the draft legislative programme for 2008-09 – with its proposals on housing, health, education and constitutional renewal – will reverse Labour’s unpopularity. Remember, the Major Government had plenty of ideas in the mid-1990s for public service reform (many later taken up by Tony Blair) and little good this did the Tories in 1997.

The key, as Mr Brown recognises, is the economy. “Showing people we can come through very difficult economic times” will no longer be taken on trust. The trouble is that, while the green shoots, let alone the blossom, of recovery will probably not be apparent until next year, the political pressures on him are more urgent.

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