Is the government imploding or does it just look that way? Downing Street advisers have their heads in their hands, I’m told. Tribal warfare has broken out in Whitehall with the Treasury and Number 10 indulging in more or less open war. Insiders say Prime Minister Gordon Brown has a multi-billion pound shopping list of plans, including state-backed mortgages, which he is saving up to announce in his speech to the Labour conference later this month.

Yet he has not cleared all these proposals with Chancellor Alistair Darling and apparently even ultra-loyal Brownites are complaining that he will not take advice from anyone – neither from political aides nor officials. Discipline is non-existent. Everyone blames everyone else. Nobody seems in charge.