It's the new Labour comeback tour. Gordon Brown is getting the old stars together to perform one last turn. He has brought Peter Mandelson back into the Cabinet, he is consulting Alastair Campbell and he has rehired Margaret Beckett as a backing vocalist.

But it's like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger. Labour's lead singer in the purple loons has exited (stage right) to earn his fortune with an international solo album. And the audience is increasingly irritated to hear Keith Richards playing the familiar tunes.

The Prime Minister's “shock and awe” reshuffle has bought him some time. The critics have been stunned into silence, the plotters have been knocked off course. Mr Brown will survive - until next summer at least. Rory Bremner is in heaven: “There's a global character crunch,” he told me yesterday, “and we just got a $700 billion cash injection in the form of the king of spin.”

But the future of the Labour Party is no more secure than it was three weeks ago. In political terms, nothing fundamentally has changed. Indeed, the reshuffle, like the relaunch before it, has just highlighted further the Government's vulnerabilities. The polls have hardly budged.

Much has been made of what Tony Blair once called the “Titanic personality feud” between the PM and PM. Certainly, the relationship would be as good a subject for a psychologist as for a political commentator. If the Labour Party is a family, as Mr Mandelson said over the weekend, it is one characterised as much as loathing as by love. Like Esau, who was robbed of his birthright by his younger, smoother brother Jacob, Mr Brown never forgave Mr Blair for “stealing” the leadership from him - and he transferred much of his anger to the so-called sinister minister whom he believed had helped to fashion his rival's goat hide disguise.

George Osborne is not the only one who has heard the new Business Secretary being less than flattering about the Prime Minister. For years the two men have been, in the words of the justice minister Michael Wills, “like two scorpions in a bottle”. Lord Levy recalls trying to engineer a rapprochement between them on behalf of Mr Blair. “Peter?” Mr Brown bellowed at the top of his voice over lunch. “He's been going around telling everyone I'm gay and I'm not gay.” There was an intensity to the animosity because they had once been so close. As Racine put it: “The heart that can no longer love passionately must with fury hate.” The mutual respect that exists at the moment could very quickly snap back into rage.

It is not, however, the emotional consequences of the reshuffle that present the real danger to Mr Brown - but the political implications. Even with the dramatic changes he made last week the Prime Minister has still failed to convey a clear sense of direction for his Government. Although he promised to be more inclusive, he put his most aggressive henchmen Nick Brown and Ian Austin in charge of party management in the whips' office. He brought back Mr Mandelson partly to symbolise an end of the rift with the Blairites. But at the same time he shunted Lord Adonis - the iconic champion of schools reform - into a siding at Transport. Blairites such as Tom Harris were sacked while the Brownite curry coup plotters were rewarded with ministerial jobs. Mr Brown also flirted with the leftwinger Jon Cruddas, although he could not find him a suitable role.

The message is only going to get more confused because it is completely unclear who is in charge of political strategy between now and the next general election. I cannot imagine that Mr Mandelson will be content to sit quietly in his department fiddling around with regulatory reform for 18 months. Indeed, he has made clear that Mr Brown wants him to deal with the Labour Party as well as labour policy. The man who once replaced the red flag with the red rose (and now seems to prefer red V-necks) has surely been brought back into government at least partly to “be Peter”, as Tony Blair used to say. His usefulness to Mr Brown is his ability to develop a message that will help Labour to appeal to middle England as well as its core vote.

But where does this leave Douglas Alexander, officially the election co-ordinator, and the other courtiers? Ed Balls is still Mr Brown's most trusted political sounding board. Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, believes she has a role, Baroness Vadera has strong views on the economic implications and Ed Miliband is in charge of the manifesto.

When it comes to communicating the message, Mr Campbell is back - but so is Charlie Whelan. They disagree about crucial things - such as how to attack the Tories, and whether it is enough for Mr Brown to fight on experience rather than hope. Many of the key players also loathe one another - the young generation has inherited the hatred without the love.

It's completely unlike 1997, when a tiny and united group decided the strategy that helped Labour to win a landslide victory. If Mr Blair had a sofa government style, Mr Brown has an assembly hall administration in which competing voices create a cacophony of noise as they shout for his ear. The party's strengths 11 years ago are now mirrored by its weaknesses. The ability to emote has deteriorated into an internalised neuroticism; the trick of triangulation now looks like dithering.

In an interview with the New Statesman recently, Mr Mandelson said that Mr Brown had to stop nodding in all directions. “If anyone thinks that the party has a future by splitting the difference between the old Left and new Labour, that we can take six of one and half a dozen of the other and rebuild the party around that, we will go downhill fast,” he cautioned. “The country has to have a real sense of what we are about.” He was right. But the Prime Minister has not so far listened to his new best friend.

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