In 1997, Tony Blair promised it would be “New Labour, New Life for Britain”. By 2001 the party was offering to fulfil “Britain’s Great Potential”. In 2005, it was “Britain: Forward not Back”. Yesterday Gordon Brown published “Building Britain’s Future”.

If it sounded familiar, that’s because it was. It was a relaunch made up of rehashed policy announcements and repackaged spending commitments, less a national plan than a national repeat. More affordable housing, health checks, one-to-one tuition, docking benefits, Lords reform — these are all things that have been promised for months, in some cases years, by the Government. It is only three months since the last relaunch, a “strategic plan” called “Building Britain’s Future”. Clearly not much building has gone on since then.

“Our most enduring reforms have come when we are boldest,” the Prime Minister wrote in the foreword — a deliberate echo, perhaps, of his predecessor’s declaration that “we are at our best when at our boldest”, which Mr Brown countered at the time with the phrase “at our best when Labour”. The reality is, however, markedly less courageous than the rhetoric.

There was an eye-catching initiative designed to appeal to BNP voters — the promise to give priority to local people for council housing — but like Mr Blair’s plan to march yobs to cash machines it is far from clear how it will work. The switch from targets to entitlements is more about presentation than substance: it is hard to see how it can make much difference to exam results or waiting lists. It’s also unenforceable, unless ministers plan to allow every parent and patient to sue if they are unhappy with the service they get.

The problem is that Labour has already spent 12 years on this construction project and the voters are getting sick of the number of tea breaks. It’s not that nothing has been built so far — there have been real improvements in primary schools and the NHS. But if this building firm wants to be rehired it needs some attractive new plans — a loft conversion, say, or a conservatory — it can’t just offer to repaint the walls. The Government seems to have run out of money as well as ideas. Even the current refurbishment is, as Lord Mandelson has now confirmed, uncosted. And everyone knows you don’t hire builders without a written quotation, particularly when money is tight.

Privately, many ministers are in despair. “There is nothing there,” says one. “We’re going to be out of power for years.” One of Mr Brown’s longest-standing supporters in the Cabinet admitted to a colleague recently that he had made a mistake. “I knew Gordon’s weaknesses but I thought they would be lessened by becoming Prime Minister, and that his strengths would increase,” he told his fellow minister. “I was wrong.”

Mr Brown is embarking on a national tour, by train, to try to persuade the voters that he is still the best Fat Controller. But he is in danger of looking like John Major, extolling the virtues of the cones hotline, as he pushed peas around his plate in a Little Chef. Cabinet ministers are being sent out to sell the message, but it is unclear what the message is. The enthusiasm for public service reform is undermined because the part-privatisation of the Royal Mail — the most high-profile example — is being shelved to avoid angering the Left.

The Prime Minister’s promise to make schools and hospitals more customer-driven is at odds with his declaration, as Chancellor, that “in health the consumer cannot be sovereign”. The pledge to give power to individuals means nothing unless they also have control over the money so they can choose a different school or hospital. “It’s dressed up in the language of empowerment but it’s nothing of the sort,” says a former Cabinet minister. “Yet again it’s Government by focus group, a hotch-potch of policies with no unifying theme.”

The voters would be confused if they were listening, but the truth is that most have switched off. Before the 2005 election, the pollster Philip Gould told party strategists that even though Labour was still scoring a few goals, nobody would notice because the crowd had gone home. Now the erstwhile fans are not just absent, they are angry. It will take more than a bit of constitutional reform and carbon capture to get them to listen. A Cabinet minister, who is loyal to Mr Brown, says: “It’s a bit like when a husband has an affair. It’s not enough for him to buy his wife a bunch of flowers; he has to really prove that he’s changed.” The Prime Minister is proffering some droopy carnations from the local garage but shows little sign of reforming his habit of fiddling with figures.

The battlelines are being drawn for the next election and it is increasingly clear that Labour intends to fight on a platform of fear, not hope. Already it is fuelling the fear of Conservative spending cuts, executed by “Mr Ten Per Cent”, fear that the “nasty party” still lurks behind David Cameron, fear of Tory toffs and job losses and negative equity. To this can be added fear of immigrants who jump the housing queue and welfare “scroungers”.

In private, Mr Brown’s strategists are clear about their intentions — the next election should, they say, be timed just as the economy is beginning to turn around, but before the recession is over so that people are still sufficiently afraid to take a risk with an untested leader. They cite with admiration the “Labour tax bombshell” campaign that secured victory for the Tories in 1992. “It wasn’t true but that didn’t matter,” one minister told me, “it made voters too worried to support Labour.”

The next election campaign is going to be a cynical and dirty fight. Now it is clear why: the party has no really substantial positive plans for the future. In his inauguration speech Barack Obama said: “We have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over discord.” Mr Brown is clinging to fear and dividing lines because he has still not found a message of hope.

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