It is hard to find Labour optimists these days, but those MPs who are not resigned to electoral defeat cling to one hope: that Gordon Brown in 2008 is in the same position as John Major in 1991. That is to say that he is in deep trouble, but that he could yet spring a surprise victory at the next election.

The pessimists suspect that Mr Brown’s predicament is much more akin to that of Mr Major in 1995, when a series of disastrous local election results pre-announced the general election defeat of his exhausted party two years later.