Why Gordon Brown has little reason to be optimistic

There will be precious little goodwill from the back benches of the Labour Party to cheer Gordon Brown over this festive season. As the government heads into 2008 weighed down by a crisis-on-crisis political climate that has left Brown looking rudderless, there is mystification in some backbench quarters that at precisely the time Brown needs a sense of unity to heal its woes, he has chosen to do the complete opposite, with controversial plans to extend the detention of terrorist suspects from 28 to an almost arbitrary limit of 42.

Frank Dobson, the former health secretary who is regarded as a supporter of Brown, is the unlikely figure who has already made it clear he intends to do all he can to see Brown defeated when the issue comes to the Commons, expected to be early-to-mid February of next year.

A defeat for the government at any time plays havoc with its authority. But a defeat for Brown in February - with Labour's donor scandal still having months left to run before all the details are known, and with the fallout from both Northern Rock and the missing data discs still hitting Brown's claim on competence - would, Dobson admits be "devastating".

Dobson - and other potential Labour rebels totalling around 40, plus a united opposition - is determined to defeat the planned hike to 42 days' detention that will be contained in an updated counter-terrorism bill. For Labour MPs, defeating Brown will be a by-product of stopping the 42-day detention period. For the Conservatives, it will be another blow to Brown's failing authority and another stick for Cameron to wield at their weekly joust during PMQs.

Geoff Hoon, the chief whip, was consulted by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and quizzed in a one-to-one meeting with Brown in Number 10 last week, on the threat from a substantial revolt. Hoon is understood to have played down the scale of the potential revolt, telling both Smith and Brown in separate meetings last week that the "compromise" figure of 42 days - down from an earlier government target of 56 - would be enough, especially if a new grade of parliamentary scrutiny was factored in.

For one Labour MP, who was on the government payroll in Tony Blair's government, both Hoon's arithmetic and Smith's calculation as to what is and isn't acceptable to the parliamentary Labour Party is "way off the mark". They are, he said: "Surrounding themselves with an air of confidence that is false, dangerous and misrepresents the anger in parts of this party at the way we are gambling, unnecessarily, with our political future. I, and many others, have no idea what is going on and why we need to be doing this now."

Hoon is understood to have told the home secretary that the size of the Labour rebellion could be below 20, which would be enough to allow the counter-terrorism bill to easily advance to the Lords. Progress through the Lords would, however, be another matter, but Hoon's reassurances were thought to be persuasive enough for Smith to launch the government's bid for 42 days ahead of a meeting of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, who were scheduled to discuss a draft report on the new counter-terrorism detention measures.

What Smith's effective unilateral declaration of intent on the issue has done, however, is to wreck Brown's claims that, in the middle of multiple crises, it would be his consensus approach inside the PLP that would prove invaluable.

Looking for consensus is no easy matter. For another Labour MP, the search is pointless. "There is none," he said. "We have a prime minister under siege trying to fight fire with fire. It makes us look riddled with indecision. So what do we do to get us out of the mess? We sow the seeds of a high-profile rebellion, get MPs to openly say they are prepared to damage the prime minister, say they accept a rebellion would harm the PM's authority. And all for something we don't actually need. To be this much out of touch is astounding."

The 14 members of the Home Affairs Committee are said to be split down the middle about the need for any extension to the current 28-day limit, which itself was a compromise limit after Tony Blair failed to get a 90-day pre-charge limit through the Commons.

On Tuesday Smith will plead her case for 42 days before the committee. Her reception is likely to be rough and far from routine. Most on the committee have so far said they have no evidence to justify going above 28 days, and key witnesses, including the director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, have told them the current 28-day limit works and they are satisfied that it remains effective and see no change necessary.

What Smith intends to do however is to focus not on the current anti-terrorist climate, but the one she predicts will face the government next year. "Her case will not paint the need for 42 days as something the government would like. She will say 42 days will soon become an absolute priority," one Home Office source said.

Dobson, on GMTV's Sunday Programme today, will both challenge the home secretary and launch what many will see as the formal rebellion that makes the vote in the Commons in February the first major parliamentary test of Brown's authority.

Defeating the 42-day proposal, Dobson says, "would be harmful for Gordon Brown. But it wouldn't just be harmful to the Labour Party, I think it would be harmful to the country."

What Dobson's advance warning to the Labour whips is intended to do is force a climb-down before the February vote. He told GMTV that because Smith had not made her statement on 42 days to the Commons, this meant there was room, as he put it, "to play for". He said he hoped Brown could be persuaded to look again at consensus, "united against terrorism", as the way forward.

Others, however, hold little hope that Brown is capable of backing off and that he will risk a damaging Commons defeat rather than be seen as being weak against a united rebellion headed by dissidents like Dobson.

One Tory MP, who was confident there would be united opposition to the extension, said: "Maybe Brown saw Blair defeated and yet defiant in his survival. Maybe he wants to show he too can survive, but it is reckless politics looking at it from where my party stands. If it's only to divert attention away from your other troubles, then it may be a gamble too far."

Damaged by his decision to allow aides to talk up an early general election and then walking away from it in the face of poor polls, began the decline in his government's fortunes. Subsequent crises have only magnified Brown's accelerating decline.

One source inside Labour's internal inquiry into the illegal donations received from David Abraham, told the Sunday Herald "this has months to run with more damage to come". The health secretary, Alan Johnson, summed up the tension evident in the senior ranks of the government, saying: "It's not a good time for the Labour Party and it's not a good time for our members "

More worrying for Johnson and others in the Cabinet is that guessing when the good times will return is proving a pointless exercise. Although Matthew Taylor, one of Blair's senior advisers in Number 10, recently described Brown's handling of the various crises as "inept", the criticism from those currently around Brown is said to be quiet and muted to the point of silence. This crisis-what-crisis? mentality is said to leave Brown desperate to control every event, every new revelation and to seek daily verification from his immediate circle of advisers - Ed balls, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander - that he is doing all he can.

The decision by Jacqui Smith to simply bypass the Commons in announcing the mission to secure 42 days is regarded by many as simply the latest example of Brown being surrounded by too small a circle of advisers unwilling to offer their boss an alternative version of how they should be climbing out of the decline.

And things could get even worse. A Cabinet office source has suggested that "relatively soon" in the New Year, the government could formally announce intentions to accelerate the process of introducing identity cards in Britain, and expand the scale of the biometric data that would be held on the national identity register.

One former Labour minister said if Brown fast-tracked ID cards, coming on the back of the loss of two CDs from HM Revenue and Customs containing personal data on 25 million individuals, it would be "a political suicide note" given the scale of the opposition.

Brown, however, is said to believe that the issue of ID cards is crucial to his vision of making Britain secure and that once the formal arguments begin in detail, a fast-track towards their introduction would prove popular.

But if opinion polls tell him there is no support for ID cards, if his backbenchers warn him, if civil rights organisations warn him, if opposition parties warn him, will he take notice? Similar warnings are there on 42 days and being ignored.

l Leader: page 39