Is the Indie party over?

These are hard times at The Independent and Independent on Sunday titles. If that seems a little obvious, given both papers have been in crisis for years (only the intervention of David Montgomery's Mirror Group as far back as 1994 stopped them folding completely), consider this: according to the latest ABC figures, The Independent is selling just 156,424 copies at its full price and its Sunday sister, 140,567.

These figures are dreadful - figures, incidentally, the daily paper prefers not to share with its readers, choosing to concentrate on a higher tally after bulk and discounted sales have been included. In February, they were selling 159,917 and 146,699 respectively at the full price (these figures exclude foreign, discount and bulk sales - listed below).

Critically, the April figure for the flagship daily comes after a redesign, a moment hailed by the paper's management as a pivotal one in its 16-year history. The new-look paper may be winning acclaim, but it would seem the only people doing the praising are existing readers.

The greater public, already wedded to their daily newspapers, are indifferent. They don't seem to care much either about the paper's avowed pro-all-things-European stance - political and lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with such a policy - and it does give the paper some point of departure - but how many people in a society already pretty much embracing European ideals and culture are so moved to switch papers?

As for the IoS, its own redesign of more than a year ago has failed to halt an inexorable downward slide. The Sunday paper looks pretty - overly so - but in the same way a football team can pass the ball beautifully and fail to score, the overall content is lacking.

While executives at Independent Newspapers, the newspapers' Irish owners, continue to put a brave face on things - insisting they have faith in their editors, Simon Kelner and Tristan Davies - and maintaining they are not about to remove them, or heaven forbid, sell the titles altogether, cracks are beginning to show.

The heart appears to have gone out of the Irish owners, their eyes are no longer smiling. For anyone used to dealing with them and their executives - as I was for a while as deputy editor of the Independent and Independent on Sunday - that is a significant point, more pivotal, possibly, than any fancy rearranging of columnists and focus on European caf? manners.

A change of personnel at the top of Independent Newspapers has seen Gavin O'Reilly, son of Tony, take the helm. Within the O'Reilly family, the English titles were very much the old man's thing. Having such liberal, genuinely intelligent papers was a badge he wore with pride, and they opened doors for him in Africa, India and anywhere else where other newspaper barons, notably Rupert Murdoch, might be viewed with suspicion.

Tony (now Sir Anthony) took real delight in reading his English independents, calling editors with comments, even writing long letters picking up on points in their pages. The rest of his family do not share his passion. Gavin, so the internal word goes, has a point to prove, not least to the City, which is always wary of any whiff of nepotism. What better way than to be seen to come down hard on your old man's playthings, make their already meagre resources stretch even further and, possibly, if that does not work, dispose of them completely?

Gavin is thought to feel that the group, which has interests worldwide, does not need to own two lossmaking papers in London to advertise itself as Independent Newspapers. At board level, so it is said, there is now little talk about transforming what has started to be seen as a liability and rather a desire to get on to discussing the assets in the group.

MR Kelner, the editor- in- chief, is believed to cut an increasingly isolated figure. He is still popular with his staff, despite finding time for lunches at The Ivy and writing for GQ magazine, and fights hard for budgets against an increasingly unsympathetic ownership.

Oddly, for a company usually hostile to unions, Mr Kelner has taken a softer stance of late, sending out placating memos to colleagues almost apologising for the difficulties of competing against richer rivals. Wagging tongues are already claiming that the days of Mr Kelner, who has gained several awards if not commercial success in his tenure, are numbered.

The whispering is not down to any question of his competence, but more because of his attitude - on budgets for example - which has been less deferential than before. This has not gone down well and there is talk among some board members that yet another change of editor might be the answer.

All of which is denied by Terry Grote, the newspapers' chief executive. According to Mr Grote, while the industry chose to use the word "relaunch", it was no such thing. "It wasn't a relaunch, it was a reformatting, a redesign," he said.

Readers were given what they had asked for, namely more European coverage, otherwise the content barely changed.

As for the Irish losing their spirit, that too, is rubbished by Mr Grote. "It's totally untrue. We're in this for the long term," he argued. Budgets may have been trimmed at the end of the last financial year but those cuts, he claimed, had been "accepted by the editor-in-chief ", and besides, other newspaper groups were also scaling back in the face of the advertising downturn.

It's a familiar refrain: owners claiming all is well; the sales figures and staff morale, which is poor, suggesting otherwise. It's been the way of The Independent and Independent on Sunday for a good while now.

One day, though, the craic will stop. It has to.