On David Miliband’s desk at the Foreign Office are two telephones. One is a standard model, which he uses to call home to get regular updates from his wife on their newly adopted baby boy.

The other - known as “Brent” - is a secure line. It has two speed dials. The first goes straight to Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state (although the button is still marked with the name of Colin Powell, her predecessor); the second goes direct to No 10.

After the first draft of his speech in Bruges last Thursday was deemed too pro-European - and consequently troubling for our American allies - and was hastily recast, Miliband might ruefully wonder which button to press first the next time he needs to get a speech cleared.

This time it was No 10 that did the editing as key passages of Miliband’s address to the College of Europe fell foul of Gordon Brown’s red pen.

On Thursday morning Foreign Office special advisers were pleased that they had influenced the newspapers to write that Miliband was to propose a build-up of continental defence capabilities. He was to say Britain must “identify targets for the investment in equipment, research, development, and training necessary to make more of our armed forces”. He was also to propose an extension of the European single market to North Africa and the Middle East by 2030.

By that evening the speech had been radically changed. Special advisers were downcast. All references to an “EU military capabilities charter” had been deleted by Downing Street. Similarly, the idea of extending the single market had been watered down to a vague commitment to a free-trade zone for “the countries of the Maghreb”. The foreign secretary had gone from Euro-enthusiast to Eurosceptic in the stroke of a prime ministerial pen.

This weekend a close adviser to Miliband tried to play down Brown’s rewriting job. “Look, there are always revisions to speeches,” she said. “No 10 having a say is nothing different to what happens normally.”

That may be the case, but the impression was of a foreign secretary put firmly in his place. To critics it appeared to be another example of Brown “the puppeteer” trying to control everything and leaving one of his senior ministers looking as if he was merely relaying his master’s voice.

It could easily be dismissed as a one-off incident, yet Miliband is not the only senior minister who has suffered from an unexpected prime ministerial intervention in recent weeks.

Alistair Darling, the chancellor, who has been struggling in the wake of the Northern Rock fiasco, was made to look weak over his proposed reforms to capital gains tax when it emerged that Brown had intervened to force him to water them down amid a backlash from senior businessmen.

Then Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, was “bumped” in the Queen’s Speech debate, being forced to give up her spot defending her department’s policy in favour of Jack Straw, the justice secretary, who had been Brown’s leadership campaign manager.

And last week one of the outsiders brought in with great aplomb to join Brown’s government in June, Admiral Lord West, was made to look a fool by Brown when he made a U-turn in the space of just 90 minutes on the merits of extending the detention period for terrorist suspects. A breakfast with Brown after West’s appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme had been enough to change his mind.

Officials report that Brown’s inner circle are keeping an exceptionally tight grip on ministers’ announcements. This can sometimes backfire. In July a No 10 official was dispatched to chide Alan Johnson, the health secretary, for agreeing to a Today programme interview in advance of an official announcement, which would have broken Brown’s edict that parliament, not the media, should be informed of decisions first.

Unfortunately in this case, it turned out that Brown had misheard the radio announcer and it was in fact an interview with Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent, who had just been released after four months as a hostage in Gaza.

When Tony Blair was prime minister it was the case that all cabinet ministers had to clear their speeches with No 10, with two exceptions: Brown and John Prescott. Now Brown is at the helm, there are no exceptions.

Critics are asking whether Brown is returning to the “control freak” tendencies for which he was renowned as chancellor. Is his true nature finally coming to the fore? And if so, what is it doing to the business of government?

ON TAKING over from Blair, the prime minister was keen to show he would ditch the sofa-style intimate government of his predecessor and revive cabinet decision-making. This began with a “tour de table” at Brown’s first cabinet meeting as prime minister.

Some critics believe the problems he is now experiencing began with this ostentatious show of political virtue.

“I just wish No 10 didn’t have to go and learn all those lessons again. Why the hell did he promise ‘change’, ‘a new type of candour and openness’? It’s just like Major’s ‘back to basics’ and Tony’s ‘whiter than white’,” said one Labour official.

One No 10 stalwart with experience of both Brown and Blair believes that since his promising start evaporated with the election-that-wasn’t fiasco, the prime minister is carrying on as was his custom at No 11.

“He has just transplanted his old Treasury ways into No 10,” she said. “He can’t help himself. Most of the rest of government doesn’t know what he’s up to. No change there. He leaves everything to the last minute. No change there. And he can’t bear dissent. No change there either.”

Of more concern is the effect this is having on the government’s reputation and policy-making ability.

“Just where is the strategy here?” said one Cabinet Office adviser. “It almost looks as though people in No 10 are listening to the Today programme and then making policy up on the hoof. I mean, do the public now know what our policy is on European defence? I’d doubt it after this week.”

The dissent is apparent in many quarters of Whitehall. Last week the hunt was on for the top civil servant who briefed a journalist about unrest in the ranks and how Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, was risking his widespread popularity by his association with Brown.

“There’s a lot of anti-Gus feeling about,” said the mandarin. “People are saying he’s too close to Brown, that he’s been seduced by the fact that he is inside the big tent.”

Perhaps one of the reasons Brown is keeping his ministers on such a tight rein is the problems he has encountered with those invited into his grand coalition.

West’s problems last week were nothing compared with the embarrassment caused by Lord Malloch-Brown, parachuted into the government as a Foreign Office minister from the United Nations.

His undiplomatic remarks and perceived criticism of the Bush administration have led officials to describe him as a “liability”.

Speaking last week at a lunch with journalists, Miliband tried to make light of Malloch-Brown’s problems. He said he and Malloch-Brown should follow the example of the foreign ministers of France and Germany and record a duet (theirs was about European integration). Possible options, he mused, could be “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word” and “I’m Still Standing”.

Still, the impression in Whitehall is that Brown had made a rod for his own back in recruiting so many “talents”.

“The trouble is that you can’t expect these nonpoliticians who have been brought in as part of the government of ‘all talents’ not to say what they think,” said one minister.

While many Blair loyalists are privately rejoicing at the woes of the Brown administration, regarding them as pay-back for the 10-year “guerrilla war” between the two camps, others are more charitable.

Matthew Taylor, Blair’s former head of strategy, said: “It’s just too early to argue that Brown’s No 10 is authoritarian. After the early days of the new administration there is, of course, now a need for No 10 to ensure ‘message discipline’ on the whole of government. There is nothing new in that.”

Yet one of Brown’s problems is that he must convince the public that he is something new, while not being seen to distance himself too much from the Blair era, in which he was intimately involved.

This weekend will provide what is for Brown an untimely reminder of those years. A BBC1 television documentary series, The Blair Years, that begins tonight, will disinter stories about the tensions between Brown and Blair, with the latter admitting for the first time that the two didn’t always get on.

Yet, giving an intriguing insight into the current situation, Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary, explains how the men did once work well together.

“Blair and Brown were the inner cell of new Labour. A lot of what they had done in bringing the Labour party round to new Labour they had done as an almost revolutionary cell, and that they weren’t much in the business of consulting their colleagues in order to determine policies.”

Brown now appears to be conducting government business in the same way - this time largely on his own.

THE prime minister’s controlling tendencies might not be the only reason why Miliband was slapped down last week, according to one minister.

“This is all about the succession,” he said. “Some people who claim to be in the Brown inner circle see Miliband as a threat and are quite content for him to get into trouble as it damages his chances of becoming leader of the Labour party.”

The young foreign secretary should watch out. Seeing off rivals is a speciality of the prime minister. While chancellor, Brown is credited with killing off the leadership ambitions of Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers, Alan Johnson, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett.

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