Matthew Norman: For Gordon Brown, this really is terminal

Shakespearean tragedy, eh? All those years we banged on about the consuming jealousy of Othello and the fretful ambition of Macbeth, until it became a clich blithe enough even for Tony Blair's bunker boys to trot out. "It's a Shakespearean tragedy," his chief of staff Jonathan Powell once told Boris Johnson when the two cyclists came to an adjacent halt at a red light. "Gordon Brown is like the guy who thinks he's going to be king, but never gets it. He's never going to be PM."

If only he'd been right, Gordon must think to himself when he wakes in a muck sweat at 4am, because tragic hero is a far more palatable role for a proud man, for all the anguish and agony, than number one fall guy in a Ray Cooney farce. Much less damaging, to borrow from the startlingly impressive Vince Cable, to be feared as Uncle Joe Stalin than giggled at in the guise of Mr Bean.

When an acting leader of a party as familiar with low farce itself as the Liberal Democrats can slay the Prime Minister with a single line, it is no longer sufficient to observe that the game is up. That Gordon is a dead man walking is a statement of the obvious too far. Barring a malevolent miracle on a scale unseen before a terrorist atrocity, perhaps, of unprecedented monstrosity he cannot hope to recover from the Biblical sequence of plagues of the past six weeks.

Wary of being made to look foolish by events, dear boy, events, respected commentators sonorously inform their readers that it isn't over yet; that with 30 months before the general election need be held, Gordon has time to turn things around if he gets a grip now.

But he doesn't, and they know he doesn't. On some level he must know it himself. Once the very sight of a politician's face induces a reflex snort of derision, there is no way back. Even Dan Quayle, who didn't know potatoes, knew that.

A peculiar sadness here is that Gordon is the least equipped human being on the planet to see the funny side himself. Most of us, in his position, would find the horror leavened by frantic bursts of gallows humour. Search parties are scattered to the four corners looking for your lost CDs, that sinister court jester Richard Branson grins smugly at the prospect of pocketing billions for taking Northern Rock off your hands, the housing market that fuelled your reputation as an economic genius is in trouble, the public-sector borrowing requirement looks menacing, and you're 13 points behind in the latest poll ... but hey, what the hell, it's Saturday night in Downing Street.

There you are settling down to Strictly Come Dancing, pondering whether to offer a ministerial post to any of the current celebs as you once did to erstwhile hoofer Fiona Phillips. Little Douglas Alexander is contentedly perched on your knee, while in your paw-like hand nestles a nice big tumbler of Glenlivet, and for the first time in days you're starting to relax.

"I will tell ya this, Wee Dougie, I will tell you this," you say, jiggling him up and down, "the one saving grace is that at least things can't get any ...". The phone rings. "Prime Minister, I don't want to alarm you," mutters a tremulous aide, "but we've got a bit of a situation in Newcastle. Are you familiar with a Mr David Abrahams? No? Are you sitting down? Good. Right then, it's like this..."

Wouldn't you spontaneously fall to the floor and crawl around until hysterical laughter born of nervous exhaustion made your ribcage scream in protest? I think you would.

But not Gordon. On him, the irony of being a man of the most unimpeachable fiscal probity brought lower than ever by a grubby funding debacle is entirely lost. Mr Blair would have gone to the Commons and brazened it out after the fashion of the late Tommy Docherty, whose first line as an after-dinner speaker after being done for perjury was: "Now I know you're not going to believe a word I say..."

For Gordon, whose stolid humourlessness seemed such an asset not so long ago, no such insouciant escape route was open. All he could do was flash the false smile that underlines just how grievously wounded, personally and politically, he is.

What is so unequivocally terminal about this latest disaster is that, in itself and in the absence of important further revelations, it could hardly be less serious. Mr Abrahams is clearly an eccentric chap, because a professional political groupie can hardly be anything else. One excuses 14-year-old girls who throw their knickers at Robbie Williams on grounds of age and hormones. For a 51-year-old (or 61; he seems uncertain on the point) to show this level of devotion towards Labour ministers and apparatchiks is unquestionably weird, but harmless for all that.

Donating money through acquaintances is dodgy, of course, but no more a genuine outrage than naively accepting it. Both may be unlawful, but with no evidence (yet) that Mr Abrahams intended to buy favours with his 600,000, it should be less major scandal than minor curiosity.

Three months ago, it would have been just that, and on and off the front pages in two days. Now, propelled by the momentum built up by the abandoned election and all subsequent fiasci, it is part of the runaway train. From now on, every fresh mistake to afflict the Govern-ment will stick to the front fenders so that it travels at exactly the same speed and identically pulverising force as the others.

There is no longer any distinction in media and public perception between trivial errors and colossal blunders, between the intentional and the unwitting, between corruption and incompetence, between rank bad management and sheer bad luck.

That is why Gordon, unjustly associated with this latest cock-up and most unfairly attacked on integrity grounds by David Cameron, is so irredeemably finished that the only sensible option open to him is to resign; and let David Miliband or Alan Johnson (or even that cunning old vixen Jack Straw, whose chirpiness bespeaks the ambition, continuing our theatrical theme, to star as The Caretaker) take on the thankless challenge of damage limitation in time for the election.

Gordon will do no such thing, of course, because he is who he is... the Shakespearean tragic hero who misread the map, and ended up not in Stratford, but with his trousers round his ankles on stage at the Whitehall Theatre. Or rather, as the venerable home of farce has renamed itself, Trafalgar Studios, bringing to mind a one-eyed British hero who had no sooner won his great battle to see off an old and hated foe than he keeled over, mortally wounded. Remind you of anyone?

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