By Simon Carr

The rest of that 10 point plan for Gordon:

6. Ignore your own whips. Push through a Bill allowing the Commons to vote on the membership of all Commons committees. Pay committee members a premium. Allow committee chairs to force debates. Halve the amount of government legislation going through the House. But insist what is passed is thoroughly scrutinised. Accept some opposition amendments as a matter of principle.

7. Make sure all European legislation is properly debated in the Commons, and have accepted mechanisms by which EU proposals can be rejected. Make sure 15 per cent of such proposals are rejected. Pick some fights you can win.

By Simon Carr

All right, Gordon, I thought it was hopeless, but maybe there are things you can do to retrieve your reputation. The point behind these suggestions is this: any nicey-nicey innovations (more childcare, longer maternity leave, higher tax credits) will produce no electoral gratitude. People will think you're being weak and trying to ingratiate yourself. The proposals need an edge. And it's important you are caused pain in this process; people will like that.

Spend £10bn or so on the relaunch. At 1.5 per cent of public spending it's less than petty cash; if you can’t find that to invest in your future you shouldn’t be CEO.

In the first of a series of posts on how Brown can turn his fortunes around, sketch writer Simon Carr struggles to see a way out for the beleaguered PM...

By Simon Carr

You’d think there’d be something Gordon could do to improve his situation but I’m jiggered if I can see what. Anything big looks desperate, anything small needs PR skill to leverage it.

What about . . . A new round of public service reform? Guarantee mortgage holders undisturbed possession of their negative-equity homes? Cut taxes? Go tough on terror? None of these work, for various reasons. Constitutional reform? Too geeky; and the Lords will fight like Russian troops in Stalingrad. Could he raise taxes to pay for a poverty program? Too panicky. Could he legalise heroin? Could he voucherise education? What about consulting his moral compass to find a nice little winnable war somewhere?

By Simon Carr

Old school moralists must love Gordon Brown. He is a living, breathing game of Snakes and Ladders. Every time he commits a moral crime he is punished for it, publicly and humiliatingly.

Now, it’s being said that Number 10 is spinning against the White House. They are complaining the Americans fixed the date of the PM’s visit without letting our heroes know the Pope would be there at the same time.

By Simon Carr

It’s a re-run of the election-that-never-was. Brown keeps his options open. He waits for the right moment to go public. And uses careful distinctions of language to keep his meaning from the public. And looks like an ass.

At his Downing St press conference last week he was asked whether he would follow Sarkozy’s lead and stay away from the opening ceremony. In his answer he said: "I think President Sarkozy said himself he expected Britain, because we are going to host the next Olympics, to be present at the Olympic ceremonies and I will certainly be there." The missing words at the end being “. . . at one of them.”

By Simon Carr

The Lib-Dem position is sinuous, supple, and so difficult to understand it’s not worth getting to grips with. Before the election, they promised a referendum on the EU Constitution, but (apparently) always argued that the better vote would be on whether we should belong to Europe, so now that the constitutional treaty is dead the only option on the current referendum proposal is to . . . abstain.

Nick Clegg’s quote came zinging back at him from William Hague: “Nothing will do more damage to the pro-European movement than giving room to the suspicion that we have something to hide, that we do not have the ‘cojones’ to carry our argument to the people.”

By Simon Carr

Darling's survival chances. There are He Must Go articles being written and they have much logic, merit and commonsense. But I suspect he has the safest seat in the cabinet. As long as Northern Rock remains problematical Darling is the indispensable can-carrier.

1) To sack him would be an admission things had been mismanaged. That is incredible. (That they would admit such a thing, I mean, is incredible.) and

2) Ed Balls would never allow his name to be forever linked to Labour's own Black Wednesday. It'll all have to be sorted out before he'll consent to take over the controls at No. 11.

By Simon Carr

Ah, they say wisely, but Darling was only given the Treasury to keep it warm for Ed Balls. Certainly, no one thought he was an autonomous chancellor. But if he is reshuffled after a year in the job, as the rumour has it, it would be amazingly unfair.

By Simon Carr

A witch hunt? Roger Gale is an odd fish, we don't see him much on the floor of the House. But he's a member of the Chairman's Panel and was the source of one of the great moments in Westminster Hall (possibly the only great moment in Westminster Hall) a couple of years ago.

By Simon Carr

After today’s outing in the House, Peter Hain looks very marginal. Gordon Brown has passed off the responsibility for his future on to one of the standards commissioners - which says to the world it doesn’t matter much to Downing Street whether Hain stays or goes.

Towards the end of Wales Questions today, just before 11.55, there was only one cabinet minister on the front bench. No one would willingly sit with him.

By Simon Carr

It’s worth savouring Gwyneth Dunwoody in full. During the Christmas Adjournment debate last week she laid into Hazel Blears in a way I’ve never heard in Parliament.

Ms Dunwoody spent some time laying out the Blears decision to reorganise Cheshire (on the grounds, possibly, that it is “too big”). She said that Hazel Blears took the decision alone and disregarded “watertight” figures which suggested a contrary course of action. “I believe,” Gwyneth said, “that it is a decision that has been taken for the most venal and personal reasons.” She did not tell us what those reasons might be, however, and that may repay investigation.

But it is her conclusion which is remarkable for sheer contemptuous energy. If this wasn't impugning the honour of a member I don't know what does.

By Simon Carr

Reports flood in (or as Downing St puts it, gossip swirls about). The Liaison Committee is said to have offered to change its timings to allow the PM to attend Lisbon. Downing St initially suggested the PM wouldn’t go at all, then would sign in private and only in the last week settled on the final arrangement. What strange attractors are hidden in the prime ministerial environment to cause this erratic behaviour?

What does Murdoch think? What does Merkel think? What do Europhiles think? What does Mr and Mrs Average think? Is a photograph of himself at the signing a hostage to fortune? What will be most useful in the three months of parliamentary debate on the Treaty? And above all, how to get the Tories on the wrong side of the argument?

The calculation is too complex. If you take it all into account you end up going, but going late and signing by yourself. The opposition call it “dithering”, and there’s enough truth in that to worry the prime minister’s advisors.

It is surprising to see such a lack of certainty in the prime minister’s tread. If you are presenting yourself as a man of conviction, direction, vision and courage – this sort of faffing about doesn't help the brand.

By Simon Carr

The chief fundraiser for the prime minister didn’t know one of the most basic laws concerning fund raising. There are people who don’t believe this. They think it incredible that a professional fund raiser wouldn't know it was illegal for donations to be anonymised through the use of third parties.

Some help, for people who can't believe the defence:

1a) It’s far too serious a matter to lie about. The government can survive any charge of incompetence; a large, variegated lie on a criminal matter like this would bring down the government like a little pig’s house.

1b) The useful rule is this: politicians don’t lie. They may bend the truth, they may twist it, they may present it in ways that make facts unrecognisable, they may take care not to know crucial facts – but they don’t tell bald lies . . . if only because they can be found out; the penalties are too harsh.

2) Had Jon Mendelsohn known it was illegal to take donations in this way he would have told someone in the prime minister’s office immediately. “Ker-rrrikey, Damien!” he’d have said, “This is a bomb waiting to go off. This could blow up in our faces if we don’t act now. Let’s go public and we can blame it on Blair.” had he known, it would have been totally impossible for him not to have told a prime ministerial adviser. And that adviser would have had to have told Brown. Ergo, he can't have known.

3) The money wasn’t large enough to ruin the party’s finances if it was given back. Just £660,000. True, there may have been a snap election coming when every penny mattered, but an election would have meant even more scrutiny of the finances.

By Simon Carr

So now everyone agrees that the giant-slayer, the Titan, the vast brooding genius of Gordon Brown has been reduced to the status of Estelle Morris. He plays in a senior division, of course, but still, everyone says he, like that unhappy Minister of Education, is Not Up To It. Estelle recognised the fact and gracefully quit, if you remember; not something we can see the prime minister willingly doing.

But for the sake of argument. Say that his talking compass (whose existence we discovered at his press conference on Tuesday) says to him, "Come on, Gord, you and me mate, let's blow this popsicle stand" (or whatever it is that talking compasses say in these circumstances). Who then would take over?

David Miliband? When he grows up he'll be Harry Potter. Ed Balls? The one with the throbbing eyeballs? The one who pumped up election fever and was dashed by one Tory tax cutting proposal? Douglas Alex. . . I can't even finish typing out his name.

Forget the younger generation entirely. Apart from the fact that they're not up to it AT ALL, the party would be in such a state of shock they'd recoil from an adventurous candidate. Also, I have to doubt whether the backbench heavies respond warmly to these fast-track whizz-kids. What does Gwynneth Dunwoody or David Winnick or Ronnie Campbell or Eric Illsley think of Ed Miliband?

By Simon Carr

Having been overseas at the time, I missed the Major years, and have always regretted it. Bliss it was to be a sketchwriter in those days with every sort of cruelty, vice and humiliation on daily parade.