Analysis: Can things get any worse for Brown?

MANCHESTER, England (CNN) -- At the height of the troubles over the near-collapse of the Northern Rock bank a minister walked into the British Treasury and asked "How's it going?"

"Well , we're not actually standing on the window sill yet," came the reply. "But we're keeping the windows open just in case."

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown must be feeling much the same. You can scarcely open a newspaper these days without seeing a fresh poll putting the Labour party or its leader at a historic low.

The media moans about his perceived lack of charisma and direction. Labour lawmakers are in a state of barely concealed panic over their job prospects after the next election. Ministers or minor officials depart or are fired as they call for Brown's departure and a leadership election

There are constant stories of looming resignations at a more senior level, of backbench plots to force a leadership contest, of a possible Cabinet deputation being readied to tell the Prime Minister within weeks that enough is enough and that he will have to go.

The Labour Party is broke. Labour's traditional supporters in the trades unions are in a state of ferment. House prices are falling, unemployment is rising. And all this against a background of international economic crisis.

Ironically, that is the one thing that may yet bring about a stay of execution for Brown. A growing number of potential rebels are recognizing that for Labour to seem preoccupied with its leader and its own fortunes at a time of such national crisis could well look to the public like dereliction of duty and drive down their poll standings still further. But his latest party conference will still be a make or break test for the beleaguered leader.

Where did it all go so wrong for Brown? It had all started so well when he took over from Tony Blair in the summer of 2007, the "natural successor" after 10 years living next door to No. 10 Downing Street as a much-lauded finance minister. No challenger came forward.

Although Brown was rapidly and severely tested by terrorist incidents, the worst floods in decades and a revival of foot and mouth disease, he came through that initial period well.

People seemed to be responding to his quieter, dourly Scottish headmasterly style after the pyrotechnics of Blair PR. Polls rose to give him an 11-point lead over the Conservatives.

But then came the first fatal mistake. At last year's conference season Brown let his aides spread the notion that he was going to stage an early election to endorse his assumption of power.

Then the polls dipped, no election was held, and he was assailed as an indecisive trimmer. His claim to represent a change from the Blair style was shattered when he went to Iraq during the Conservative Party conference and re-announced troop withdrawals cuts already planned.

He made a hash of signing up to the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, embracing the new EU constitution. Wanting to appease British critics he turned up late on the flimsy excuse of other parliamentary business and signed it in private. That way he alienated his fellow leaders and yet still drew the opprobrium of the Britons who were against the treaty -- the worst of both worlds.

The accidentals which can trip up any government began to happen -- computer disks carrying the tax details of millions of British citizens were lost. Brown angered many of his own backbenchers by pressing on with plans to have terrorist suspects locked up for up to 42 days without trial. His successor as Chancellor had to buy the government out of trouble over miscalculated tax cuts promised by Brown in his time at the Treasury. And the collapse of Northern Rock, and the government's handling of it, alarmed the British people.

Since then, little has gone right. Brown has been consistently trounced in verbal combat in the House of Commons with the Conservative leader David Cameron, and. occasionally by the other opposition party, the Liberal Democrats.

A whole string of political contests has seen Labour humiliated: the first parliamentary byelection seat captured from Labour by the Conservatives in 30 years; the loss of London's City Hall to a Conservative maverick; a triumph for the Scottish Nationalists on Brown's home patch north of the border; fifth place behind minority parties in the Henley byelection.

The trade unions had looked to the more traditional Brown to engage with them more than Tony Blair had done. Instead, at a time when their members are feeling economic pressures, they have found themselves lectured about the need for pay restraint.

Brown, in short, is in trouble on almost every front. So far there have been sporadic assaults within his ranks by small disjointed groups. As yet there has been no open revolt in his Cabinet.

Partly that is because no opinion poll offers evidence that any other leader would lift Labour's fortunes out of the mire. Party it is because no strong rival has emerged.

Many feel that Labour's electoral prospects are so dim that figures like the youthful Foreign Secretary David Miliband would have little to gain by taking over before an election -- better to be the party's next generation savior after that inevitable defeat, say some of his supporters.

What nobody within Labour's ranks seems to see at the moment is the way back for Brown.