The leather upholstery in the back of the prime ministerial Jaguar bears witness to Gordon Brown’s working habits. Flecked with black, the car’s cream interior suffers from frequent slips of Mr Brown’s pen as he tries to work on the move.

“He’s messy,” his wife Sarah told Labour’s conference this autumn before insisting that he “gets up every morning thinking about the things that matter”.

That attempt to make a virtue of Mr Brown’s pre-occupation jars with his slapdash letter of condolence that further hurt a grieving mother. However inadvertent, the offence it caused was avoidable. An embattled No 10 yesterday refused to explain how the sub-standard letter came to be posted. Any attempt to hang the blame on a lowly clerk would, Mr Brown’s aides know, rebound. The responsibility for the operation of 10 Downing Street and for his personal PR is ultimately his.

However, he does have political advisers and senior civil servants whose job is to avoid the hidden — as well as obvious — PR disasters.

Sue Nye, director of government relations, Jeremy Heywood, permanent secretary at No 10, and Gavin Kelly, the director of policy, are said by insiders to be the three figures who can — and regularly do — confront Mr Brown. More junior figures, such as David Muir, director of strategy, Justin Forsyth and Michael Dugher, political press advisers, are more careful about when to go toe to toe with “the Boss” but will do so on occasion. Simon Lewis, his new director of communications, is said to be not yet a member of Mr Brown’s kitchen cabinet.

None of the members of his team deny that Mr Brown can be clumsy and absent-minded; each has stories about his imperfect eyesight. On a previous wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph, for example, he contrived to walk off in an overcoat belonging to John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, whom he then accused of making off with his own, rather more tatty, waterproof.

Other stories, less humorous, suggest an emotional myopia. A press briefing on domestic politics scheduled during Mr Brown’s trip to Israel was cancelled at the last moment: the proposed venue was to be the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem.

Aides complain, also, of a frantic pace in which accidents are more likely. Returning from Brussels after the recent European Council, Mr Brown dismayed officials by accompanying them home on the Eurostar so that he could work on no fewer than eight speeches he had planned.

In an increasingly adverse media and political environment, No 10 claims that small errors become grotesquely magnified. Aides cite “biscuitgate” — when Mr Brown was criticised for failing to answer questions on his confectionery preference. In fact, they insist, Mr Brown was unaware of the queries on the Mumsnet website until the issue had become a cause célèbre.

But while trivial, such blunders contribute to the impression of a Prime Minister so preoccupied with what he likes to call the “big picture” that he overlooks the details by which he is judged.

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