There is an air of barely restrained panic emerging from the home of a leading paparazzo that has become the prime minister’s temporary summer residence. Aside from the twice-daily workouts with his fitness instructor, Gordon Brown has been busy planning his autumn campaign to head off a putsch by rivals who are getting more brazen by the day.

All the signs are that Mr Brown intends to spend very large amounts of taxpayers’ money in an ultimately doomed effort to save his political skin. This spending is likely to make almost no difference to the looming tsunami of higher inflation, plunging house prices, repossessions, rocketing fuel bills, rising unemployment and bankruptcies that make up the true state of the economy and which will terminate his premiership.

Worse, the government has effectively frozen what was left of the housing market by vacillating over whether to suspend stamp duty on house sales. By opening up all areas of tax change to scrutiny, it means everything is effectively put on hold until the Treasury works out how to pay for his largesse. The latest wheeze is for 7m families on child benefit to get £150 as a winter fuel supplement. Another idea is to send pensioners on free holidays with their carers. All that is fine and dandy, but is further evidence of short-term tinkering by a government which has lost direction and has no plan other than a spending spree financed by borrowing on the never-never.