Brown can't change - that's why he must go

The pictures say it all. Gordon Brown, supposedly relaxing on his Suffolk holiday, looks tense and uncomfortable; David Cameron, strolling barefoot with his wife on a Cornish beach, appears happy and natural. Brown is palpably out of touch with the rest of Britain on holiday; he is isolated from reality. Even after the disaster of the Glasgow East by-election, he does not believe anything has fundamentally changed. Encouraged by loyalists in the Downing Street bunker, he believes his survival and eventual re-election are possible. Yet for those beyond the bunker, Brown is now nothing more than a salesmen with nothing left to sell.

Brownism was always about camouflage. Ever since he arrived in the House of Commons in 1983, Brown realised that his brand of Presbyterian socialism would never be accepted by the English middle classes. His and Peter Mandelson's invention of New Labour appealed to disgruntled Tories by appropriating their values of opportunity, enterprise and fairness, capitalising on Tony Blair's personality to disguise Labour's ideological vacuum. But now Brownism's hollowness is exposed, and his own character means he cannot change.

Losing Glasgow East was not just an electoral catastrophe. Rather, Brown's rejection by his own people in Scotland was the beginning of the end. Every day that passes will now intensify his humiliation and diminish his authority. For while he enjoys his holiday, Brown should not be beguiled by the radio silence of his parliamentary colleagues. Political suicide or assassination to save Labour self-destruction are the only options left to them. The hunt for an alternative to Brown is certain to continue throughout August.

The discussions will need to coalesce by the end of that month. Undoubtedly, Charles Clarke and other former ministers who actively campaigned against Brown's election as leader will be recruiting despairing MPs to join a coup. They know that if their plans fail and the party faithful gather for their annual conference-in Manchester in late September without a timetable for Brown's rapid departure, then a whole generation of Labour MPs will have signed away their future.

But that is unlikely. Even David Miliband and James Purnell do not believe that their political fortunes will survive a rout under Brown in 2010 and endure until a Labour revival, possibly in 2020 but more likely in 2025. Those younger ministers can surely recall the grim faces of Tory backbenchers who now, over 50 years old, have watched their political ambitions turn into dust since 1997. They surely will spurn Brown's claims that he can still transform Labour's fortunes.

Brown has been blessed by good luck to have survived one whole year before his flawed character and political contradictions were fully exposed. In recent months, the frustrated appeals by Labour loyalists for Brown to "set out his vision" betrayed their gross misjudgment of the self-proclaimed "Iron Chancellor". Contrary to Brown's hints throughout the Blair years that he could renew the party's ideological purity, Brownism has been exposed as offering nothing original-That has not, of course, prevented the unions from seizing this opportunity to demand - and get - promises of greater workplace rights, a higher minimum wage and limits on private involvement in the NHS.

Worse, Brown's years in the Treasury are now judged by the electorate to have been a costly charade. All those stern admonitions about prudence, investment, enterprise and the golden rules of borrowing to prevent us ever returning to "boom and bust" are seen by electors to have been a sham.

If Glasgow's poorest - the targeted beneficiaries of Brown's socialism since 1997 - reject the Prime Minister then there is no hope that English electors will rally to his cause. In the recent elections, the English working and middle classes have shown their disdain for Brown. That distrust will not be reversed by promises to spend vast amounts of borrowed money euphemistically camouflaged as "investment". The electorate has already spotted that Brownite trick.

Untold billions of pounds have been wasted by Brown's constant meddling in the NHS and education system. The current SATs disaster exposes the price of Brown's political interference since 1997. Tax credits, his scheme to help the poor, have become a costly vehicle for fraud and a poverty trap. Because of Brown's use of PFI contracts for public building schemes, Britain's real national debt has ballooned and is a barrier to reducing taxation. Meanwhile, his refusal to set out an energy policy has left Britain at the mercy of Europe's gas barons, who have just announced a 22 per cent price hike, condemning Britain to suffer Europe's highest energy costs.

But Brown's worst achievement is the surge towards negative equity for many home owners. Ever since 1997, Brown ridiculed those warning about the danger of a housing bubble. Just as he ruined our private pension schemes, Brown is responsible for the impending slump in house prices. Now, on the eve of the "bust" after the boom, Britain is powerless to stem growing unemployment, inflation and stagnation.

Taxpayers have finally understood that he was not the architect of an economic miracle but the beneficiary of good luck and a strong economy inherited from the Tories. During Labour's decade, the whole developed world enjoyed similar growth and low inflation as Britain. Brown's genius was to claim credit for those years of prosperity. That credit has been eroded by his repeated Budget U-turns - the result of his calculated disingenuousness.

But now the cupboard is bare. Brown cannot re-invent either himself or his beliefs. His repetitive, sermonising speeches grate. Blair's ability to empathise with the electorate eludes him.

So Labour MPs must now swiftly make their choice: either march like the British infantry at Passchendaele towards destruction in 2010 - or commit regicide. The facts are indisputable. The opinion polls and election results this spring reflect the consistency of a 20 per cent swing to the Conservatives across the whole of England. Brown cannot reverse that trend and restore his reputation. Without Brown, Labour will survive and might even prosper. But the party is certain to crash for a generation if Brown remains - because he cannot change.

Tom Bower's biograph, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister is published by Harper-Perennial.