All governments end in failure. But never in modern British political history has there been a collapse as startling and dramatic as that which is taking place at Westminster this week.
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The Labour Party has been braced for months to receive a drubbing in today's European and local authority elections. But even before the first ballot is cast, never mind counted, ministers have been throwing themselves from high places in a fashion that would incur the disbelief of lemmings. Many of those who survive appeared last night in a state of mutiny as Gordon Brown took his first bumbling steps towards a Cabinet reshuffle. The latest rout began on Tuesday.
A clutch of ministers and MPs broke it to their families that, like it or not, they intend to spend more time with them. Jacqui Smith, Tom Watson, Beverley Hughes and Patricia Hewitt led the list of parachutists suddenly proclaiming a determination to return to the simple pleasures of dish-washing, bedtime stories and other activities in which, presumably, they will do less damage to the national interest.
Hazel Blears, she of the imbecile grin, yesterday joined the rush, at least 48 hours before her inevitable sacking. Chancellor Alistair Darling appeared to be living on borrowed time, following revelations about his abuse of Commons allowances. But reports last night suggest that he is clinging to his desk at the Treasury, rejecting proposals of a job swap.
Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, is even more tarnished by the expenses scandal, but may be less vulnerable because no one notices whether he belongs to the front bench or not.
And the Prime Minister? Gordon Brown inhabits an extraterrestrial zone far off among the planets. He has divorced himself not merely from the electorate, but from mankind. His public pronouncements are periodically beamed back to Earth from a Downing Street space station. Inside the capsule, he conducts meetings and thinks great thoughts. But there is no evidence that these are founded upon any awareness of what is taking place in real Britain, and of what 'hard-working British families' (those people he hoped would vote for him if he gave them enough taxpayers' money) are saying to each other about him. The latest tidings of reshuffle chaos emphasise that he has even lost control of his own Cabinet.
Brown will cling to the grandeur of power until the last possible moment. He believes himself much more fit for the job than David Cameron, his despised rival. He is untroubled by embarrassment, far less a sense of personal responsibility, for the economic plight of the country. He imagines himself saving us, heedless of the fact that his policies as Chancellor have contributed mightily to this mess.
But hardly anyone else in the Cabinet, or indeed the parliamentary Labour Party, any longer believes in this administration's fitness to govern. The most startling aspect of the events of recent days and weeks has been the collapse of government confidence.
To run a country, just as to play tennis or boss a business, self-belief is indispensable. To win a match or launch a sales campaign or steer a Whitehall department, you need to be convinced that you can do it better than the competition. Suddenly, there is hardly a man or woman with keys to a Cabinet red box who possesses that assurance.
Even before today's election results have been posted, many ministers and MPs are in the mood to throw in the towel. It is important to remember how deep were the troubles of the Brown regime, before the MPs' expenses scandal was even heard of. The public finances are wrecked. Every day for months, economic commentators - around the world as well as here at home - have heaped scorn on the absence of any plausible fiscal plan for salvaging Britain's exchequer. Brown and Darling are committed to spend, spend, spend to win an election.
They offer no hint of what might happen thereafter, though we can guess, and it is not pretty. Elsewhere in government, there is a void of competence. Forget Jacqui Smith's bent housing arrangements and her husband's publicly funded taste in movie viewing. From the day Smith became Home Secretary, it was plain that she was not up to the job. The same is true of most of her Cabinet colleagues. They look what they are: tail-end charlies of an exhausted and discredited regime. The best and brightest of New Labour's people came and went years ago. Brown is pinning great hopes on his imminent reshuffle.
But who is fit to join the Cabinet, to replace the regiment of ministers who should go? There is no galaxy of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young heroes and heroines, waiting on the backbenches for a weekend call from good old Gordon. New Labour has expended its ammunition, used up its talent. Almost all of Brown's MPs know this.
I wrote before the last election, in 2005, that there might come a time when Labour would regret winning it. Few, if any, British governments have proved able to make effective use of power for more than two terms. Harold Macmillan triumphed in the 1959 election, when the Tories had already ruled for eight years and survived the Suez disaster. But thereafter, his administration lapsed into frustration and ridicule. Margaret Thatcher's third term ended in tears, with her eviction in 1990, followed by six years of painfully limp-wristed stewardship by John Major. One of the most striking aspects of the last phase of Major's regime was a collapse of ministers' self-confidence.
By 1997, few Tories believed they deserved to beat Tony Blair's New Labour. They knew they had shot their bolt. But, even in those dark days, the Conservatives still had ministers of the calibre of Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Douglas Hurd - big beasts all - occupying the top jobs.
There was nothing resembling today's shambles, with Cabinet pygmies stampeding for the exits, and the economy in tatters. Labour veteran Sir Gerald Kaufman warned in his book How To Be A Minister: 'If you are contemplating resigning your ministerial office, be entirely sure you want to go.'
Almost everyone in this Government, with the exception of the Prime Minister and his creepy crony, Ed Balls, seems desperate to be somewhere else. That even includes some ministers who have escaped unscathed from the Commons expenses scandal and whom Brown is willing to keep in their jobs. Meanwhile, Alan Johnson is widely touted as Brown's most likely successor, if there is a putsch following today's election results. Yet Johnson's most notable achievement as a minister was his surrender to the public sector unions when the Government sought to check their pension bonanza in order to make Labour's client supporters share some fraction of the private sector's sufferings.
Whether Brown or Johnson leads Labour, its credibility is irrecoverable. Of course, the Tories have their own expenses embarrassments. Their front bench includes some miserable specimens who may well prove to be the Smiths and Blearses of the future.
But only a General Election and change of government can draw a line under the sorry past and farcical present. It is absurd to suggest, as the Prime Minister did at the weekend, that he is the appropriate man to preside over reform of parliament, far less over salvaging our finances.
The statesmanlike course for Gordon Brown is to go to the country. But it would be naïve to suppose that this heroic fantasist will do any such thing. If he did, he might earn the British people's gratitude for the manner of his departure. Otherwise, he will be subjected to their anger and bitterness as we are forced to suffer another year of bungling and paralysis like the last.
It was probably inevitable that, after 12 years of office, the Labour Government should have run out of road. But the sheer indignity and chaos of this administration's predicament defies belief. Gordon Brown has lost control, and it seems fanciful to suppose he can ever get it back. The British people deserve to be delivered from a regime that has become ridiculous.
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