Tis the season to be jolly but facing rebellions at home and accusations of surrender abroad, the occupant of Number Ten could be forgiven for asking "Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"
Last weekend John Prescott publicly attacked Tony Blair's proposed education reforms. Today it's become clear that privately the chancellor's had doubts about the EU rebate deal.
Pointedly the Treasury has consistently refused to give its public blessing to the deal done over the weekend. The chancellor - who was in the United States when the deed was done - has hidden behind the procedural nicety that the EU budget is the responsibility of the Foreign Office and Number Ten.
Why? Because he argued privately - as the Tories now do publicly - that not a penny of the British rebate should have been given up until the French were forced to give up a euro (or more) of their agriculture payments.
Tony Blair rejects that view because he insists it would have led to British isolation. Ah, argued Gordon Brown, why not offer a one-off payment for EU expansion while still refusing to budge on the rebate?
The prime minister argued today, in a curious reversal of roles, that that would have cost the Treasury more. These differences over a deal now done would be a matter for political historians if it were not for the fact that at a difficult political time for the government, the chancellor wants us to know about them.
There's no doubt that after today's news conference, Tony Blair still has it in him to lead. The question is whether the Labour Party wants to follow. No wonder Peter Mandelson warned this morning that New Labour was reaching a moment of decision.
"Blair at bay" says the Daily Mail. No surprise there, you may think, before turning to the Guardian.
It declares: "The Tories are back".
At the end of this election year, Westminster buzzes with talk of an end of an era. The Tories have changed their leader to someone who, at last, is making the political weather.
If you wonder what all the fuss is about just look at the polls. For a decade the Conservatives have flatlined at 30-and-a-bit percent. Those days appear to be over and that’s what's driving politics.
The Lib Dems dithered over whether to ditch their leader and have, instead, merely wounded him. Come the New Year the talk of ditching Kennedy will return until attention focuses on the big one – when will Blair go?
You think I’m overdoing it? Just look at the behaviour of Labour MPs once mocked for being automatons with pagers (Do you remember the old gag about the Labour MP who dropped dead when a hairdresser removed his earphones? The baffled barber picks up the earphones to hear Peter Mandelson saying "Breathe in, breathe out").
The man who taught the Labour Party the value of discipline, John Prescott, now symbolises its absence.
The curiosity about all this is the gap between the real world and the world of Westminster. Is the country in the midst of a crisis? No. The IMF and the Bank of England have just confirmed that the economy is picking up again and inflation is – despite all the fears – under control.
Has patience with the war in Iraq run out? Things aren’t obviously worse than they were and arguably better, politically at least.
The only explanation I have for this is Blair-weariness. Take the collection of problems which allowed the Mail to talk of Blair at Bay – Europe, education and smoking. In each case, it’s Tony Blair’s rhetoric that lands him in trouble.
He prepared the country for a battle with the old enemy to protect the rebate and slay the Common Agricultural Policy. Had he not done so he could, as he struggled to do on Monday, so easily have heralded the deal he got as a victory for British diplomacy and the EU expansion.
It was he who proclaimed a schools revolution with every school governing itself, leaving the hapless education secretary to tell her MPs that her White Paper in fact only represented evolutionary change.
It was he who said that every time he carried out reform he wished he’d gone further, leaving many in Labour baffled why this injunction doesn’t apply to a smoking ban.
Now, you may say and you’d be right, this happens to anyone who’s led for as long as he has. You may say and you’d be right again that reality will soon kick in. Finally, you may say, the Cameron honeymoon can’t last and even on these polls he wouldn’t win an election. Right again.
And yet and yet change is in the air.
I'm off to see the prime minister's final news conference of the year. Let's see what he's got to say about it.
