Gordon Brown's popularity is waning, reports Frank Millar, London Editor
Is Gordon Brown still "fit for purpose"? Or is he destined to play Jim Callaghan to Tony Blair's Harold Wilson - a stopgap leader headed for election defeat and the opposition benches?
These are questions tormenting many Labour MPs this weekend after a second poll suggesting Britain's prime minister in waiting is less popular than the man he would replace - and that the "Iron Chancellor" is already losing his previously undisputed advantage, namely his reputation for economic competence.
The latest stage of his long valedictory tour saw Mr Blair in Llandudno yesterday, rallying Welsh voters ahead of the May assembly elections with the claim that, whatever their "posturing", David Cameron's Conservatives remained unfit to run the economy and would continue to "put the interests of the few first, and the interests of the many last".
However, his speech coincided with a YouGov poll showing that voters, by a narrow majority (30 per cent to 27 per cent) now think the Tories more likely to run the economy well.
As YouGov's Peter Kellner observed, this is less a breakthrough by Cameron's Conservatives than evidence of what Tony King described in the Daily Telegraph as "the Labour government's gradual but apparently inexorable loss of its reputation for economic competence".
At the last general election Labour's advantage on the issue of economic competence was 49 per cent to 27 per cent.
Yesterday's poll also illustrated the uphill struggle still facing Mr Cameron, giving him a five-point lead over Labour but - at 37 per cent to 32 per cent - still short of the magic 40 per cent-plus figure necessary, and on a sustained basis, if the Conservatives are to have any chance of forming the government after the next election.
Tuesday's ICM poll had the Conservatives nine points ahead of Labour at 40 per cent to 31 per cent - with the mention of Mr Brown's name apparently reducing Labour's support by a further two points.
YouGov's findings were far less dramatic, although again the message was of a limited further advantage for the Conservatives in the event of Mr Brown becoming prime minister - so dismaying those nervous backbenchers counting on a Brown "bounce" once Mr Blair finally departs Number 10.
As a Guardian editorial observed, it is right to treat with caution polls asking voters how they might respond in a situation that has not yet arrived.
There must be advantages to incumbency, and Mr Brown may indeed have a spectacular plan for those "first 100 days", signalling both continuity and necessary change. Yet, as the same editorial remarked, Mr Brown is already a very familiar figure: "If voters are not sure about him now, why should they be more enthusiastic once he is in office?"
This echoed MP Frank Field's previous demand: "What new directions can be offered when the architect of current policies has merely moved up one place?"
Mr Field would love environment secretary David Miliband to raise the standard and force a real leadership contest, as would some still close to Mr Blair. However, they suspect Mr Miliband will calculate he has too much to lose, and decline. Hence a resigned sense that Labour is "sleepwalking" into a Brown leadership, which some Blairities privately predict will prove a disaster.
Loyal Brownites would counter that the damage inflicted on Mr Brown's prospects is the result of Mr Blair's unwillingness still to leave the stage. Be that as it may, the polls are now reflecting something that begins to look suspiciously like a pattern. And the murmurings are starting again, with MP Derek Wyatt (nursing a majority of just 79) openly reflecting yesterday that Labour is "in a drift scenario", while worrying that the public is "ahead" of them. These are not good times for Labour.