Gordon Brown’s premiership faces a lingering death as painful as that experienced by John Major in 1996-97 unless he gets a grip quickly. Long-serving MPs were drawing parallels last night between the two: the willingness of government backbenchers to defy their leader, a loss of prime ministerial authority and open fatalism about the party’s electoral prospects.

Yesterday’s defeat will penetrate well beyond the world of Westminster because of the emotive power of the rights of Gurkhas who have fought for Britain and because of the striking pictures. Joanna Lumley is probably equivalent to half a dozen by-election defeats on her own. The issue symbolises what voters dislike about the style of Mr Brown’s leadership. Labour has occasionally been defeated in the Commons before, but not in circumstances such as last night.

Even the Major administration was never beaten on a Liberal Democrat motion: government backbenchers normally dislike voting with the Opposition on their chosen debates so the outcome is a real coup for Nick Clegg – and should boost his standing as a leader – since he has been pressing the issue for some time. It was revealing that David Cameron repeatedly praised Mr Clegg’s initiative, an embrace that the Lib Dem leader will want to escape.

Of course, one debacle on its own does not finish off a government or a prime minister.

Unlike the Conservatives’ disappearing Commons majority in the mid1990s Labour still has a comfortable working majority, as was shown by the votes on the Budget on Tuesday.

What matters is the longer-term, cumulative impact, creating the impression of a Government stumbling in retreat.

It is very hard to recover from, and reverse, the impression of being a loser. Underpinning last night’s dramas are the recession and the hole in the economy, and the state of the public finances, caused by the banking crisis and a slump in the housing market.

Labour MPs have been shaken by the Government’s tactical ineptitude, which they trace directly to Mr Brown himself.

There is also a clear link between the defeat on the issue of the Gurkhas and the debates today over MPs’ expenses. Labour can fairly claim to have eased the entry of former Gurkha soliders into Britain, but the manner in which the Government has done so has appeared bureaucratic and grudging. Yesterday’s concessions were also presented in a clumsy way, failing to win over Labour critics.

Similarly, Mr Brown sought to be a reformer on MPs’ expenses. He has rightly recognised the need both for a comprehensive plan and for speedy action before the damaging disclosures expected in July, when 750,000 pages of receipts of MPs’ expenses will be released.

Mr Brown’s move to seize the initiative last week, however, was completely bungled, from his gauche appearance on YouTube to his failure to line up not only the other parties but also his own backbenchers.

Even after retreating over a specific plan regarding MPs’ second home costs, his attempt to secure an early decision on reforms over the disclosure of pay on second jobs and of MPs’ staff is being challenged.

The most serious threat today comes from an amendment from the highly respected Tory Sir George Young and the cross-party membership of the Standards and Privileges Committee. It proposes that a decision be delayed until the completion of a review by the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly.

Sir Christopher has rejected Mr Brown’s plea to complete its work quickly, an extraordinary snub for the Prime Minister.

Whatever happens today, there is still a need, as Mr Brown argues, for an early decision and there is no reason why Sir Christopher’s committee should not speed up its work after being publicly inactive on the issue until recently.

An aggrieved Mr Brown will no doubt protest his good intentions. But these are not enough in politics. Authority and an ability to lead, and win, are all.

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