This is a government of the living dead, a zombie administration, devastated, divided and directionless. The Prime Minister has been wounded but not killed. He limps on, disrespected by ministers, resented by backbenchers, disliked by the electorate. He is in office but not in power, strong enough to see off a cack-handed coup but too weak to appoint a chancellor of his choice. Yesterday another minister, Jane Kennedy, resigned in protest about his bullying political style.

Labour politicians are stuck in limbo, like the uncommitted at the gates of Hell in Dante's Inferno, pursued by wasps and eaten by maggots as punishment for thinking of their own self-interest. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” read the words above the door that leads to political oblivion.

The governing party is reeling from election results that are truly dire. For the first time since the First World War, Labour now has fewer local councillors than the Liberals and, in the European elections, it secured just 15 per cent of the popular vote. The British National Party won two seats in the European Parliament - not because more people agree with its racist views but because support for Labour has slumped.

Mr Brown's personal authority is shot to pieces. Although he managed to form a Cabinet, several of its members continue to question his leadership abilities. I am told that even yesterday David Miliband was still considering going privately to tell the Prime Minister that he should stand down. Had James Purnell waited until then to resign, it is said that Mr Miliband could have been ready to join him, using the local and European election results as evidence of Mr Brown's lack of appeal. Even if Mr Miliband now does nothing, it is not good to have a foreign secretary with such a low opinion of a prime minister.

Tessa Jowell - promoted to the Cabinet last week - is among the ministers who have told Mr Brown to his face that he must change. There was a mass revolt around the top table at the suggestion that Alistair Darling might be replaced with Ed Balls. The Chancellor himself will not easily forgive the man next door. Even some of those declaring their loyalty in public admit privately that they do not think Mr Brown can win a general election. “It's hard to see how the narrative around Gordon and the Labour Party can change,” one said. “There just aren't any new ideas.”

According to one government aide, “the balance of power has changed” in Government. “There will be no negative briefings from No 10,” she said. “They wouldn't dare smear us because they know what would happen if they did.”

Labour is fracturing fast, with Blairite turning on Blairite and the Brownites divided among themselves.

Even the sisterhood is squabbling about whether there is sexism in No10. The plotters are disorganised, the Left is sticking with Mr Brown hoping that the party will move in its direction after an election defeat. At last night's meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, some MPs openly called on their leader to stand down. The Prime Minister won a reprieve by promising to govern in a different way.

Lord Mandelson is masterminding the fightback - it is no coincidence that he has a picture of Elizabeth 1 on his office wall. The real deputy prime minister is even willing to delay his policy to part-privatise the Royal Mail to head off the Labour rebellion. A “national plan” for the economy and domestic policy will be published - probably next week. “New Labour is not about faces, it's about policies,” the man who is now First Secretary likes to say.

But what are the new ideas? Mr Brown is determined to cling on to power but seems unable to say what he intends to do with the next 11 months. It is two years since the Prime Minister promised to give us his “vision”. As one of his advisers admits: “The cupboard is bare.”

When the expenses scandal broke, Mr Brown promised a constitutional revolution - but it turned out he meant a new Cabinet sub-committee on “democratic renewal”.

Ministers report a sense of paralysis in the centre. Where are the radical plans for schools, crime policy or health? If anything, it looks as if Labour has moved away from choice in the public services towards a more statist approach. Mr Brown's allies argue that there are no ideological differences within the Labour Party - and that the rebels just want a more “touchy-feely” figure at the top. In fact several of the ministers who resigned had become increasingly frustrated by the direction of travel and what one calls the “policy vacuum” in Downing Street.

Hazel Blears intends to use her position on the backbenches to argue for greater decentralisation of power in the public services - and a return to the so-called respect agenda promoted by Tony Blair and sidelined by Mr Brown.

According to friends, she was frustrated that her plans to give more control to individuals over their lives, in a White Paper last year, were blocked by Mr Brown. Caroline Flint was also irritated that the proposal she drew up as Housing Minister to force council house tenants to look for a job was dropped by No 10.

Mr Purnell was not just concerned about Mr Brown's inability to communicate with the voters - he was also worried by what he saw as a slow but sure drift away from new Labour. As one Cabinet minister who did not resign says: “Gordon just doesn't understand Middle England.”

In an interview published in the New Statesman shortly before he returned to the Government, Lord Mandelson warned against “nodding in this direction, then that direction... without any clear purposeful direction”. But many in the party think this is what is Mr Brown is still doing. He lives to fight another day - but for what purpose? The danger is that like the Fisher King in T.S. Eliot's poem he will sit, powerless as the party behind him turns into a Waste Land.

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