The familiar cliché of a week being a long time in politics has been truer than ever for Gordon Brown in the last few days. His appearance on the Andrew Marr programme last Sunday – which generated news of his latest ‘relaunch’, ‘fightback’ etc during the days’ bulletins – has now been buried beneath a mound of horrendous opinion polls, the Scottish referendum fiasco and the latest round of memoirs. Next up of course is the Crewe by-election.

Yet returning to that interview provides some useful insights into why exactly Brown is struggling so much at the moment. To turn one of his favourite criticisms of David Cameron back on himself, it’s not just about style but substance.

Whatever his personal flaws and inability to connect with people (witness his rather unconvincing attempt to ‘feel the hurt’ of people’s economic worries, as he put it during the interview) I got the overriding impression that this man has run out of ideas. It wasn’t just the overused truisms about long term decisions, but also the fact that the only approach he seemed to envisage was greater state intervention, in whatever social or economic problem that he could identify. Whether it’s his belief that he can dictate vast new housebuilding programmes or ‘unlock the talent of the people of this country’ the picture he paints is of a passive population waiting for the omniscient Gordon to intervene.

As Robert Colvile has pointed out  Brown’s statist vision has only served to deepen the mess of the 10p tax rate issue, in the way he has sought belatedly to compensate the losers through a complex cocktail of tax credits and winter fuel benefits. Rather than reducing the tax burden on the poor he has opted for greater state dependency.

As Scott Kelly wrote here last week in the context of Labour’s higher education policy, it is striking how little fresh thinking is coming from the Government. It is surely no coincidence that the Labour MPs who seem genuinely committed to policy innovation and public service reform, like Alan Milburn and Frank Field, are outside Brown’s Ministerial ranks.

When Brown become PM  less than a year ago he promised that his new Government would be all about change and renewal; and in October he cancelled the election saying that he wanted time to set out his ‘vision for change’. Yet it seems that after ten years of waiting and plotting for the top job, this Prime Minister increasingly resembles the Emperor with no clothes.