TO panic or not to panic. This is the question for Labour MPs as they contemplate their by-election disaster and decide whether a coup should follow Crewe.

But the answer may lie in a further poser - does Gordon Brown resemble the John Major whose ship stayed afloat at the 1992 election, or the one who went down with all hands five years later?

Of course, that Mr Brown should be compared with the weak and vanquished last Tory prime minister at all speaks volumes about his plight - but that, truly, is how bad things are.

For Labour optimists - there are some - Mr Brown is like the Mr Major tipped to lose in 1992, an election which followed a deep recession, mass unemployment and the misery of home repossessions.

As the economy began to pick up, voters chose to stay with the devil they knew rather than take a chance on an untested opposition party. Against all the odds, the Tories won.

Come 2010, the optimists argue, Mr Brown - a successful Chancellor, remember - will, similarly, reap the benefits of digging in and steering the economy through troubled times.

Voters will also reward the Government for its calm handling of the Northern Rock crisis, when the Tories wanted to put the bank into administration - hanging staff and depositors out to dry.

Nonsense, say the pessimists, who believe Mr Brown is now a figure of ridicule akin to the Mr Major of five years later, who was swept away by a landslide. Don't forget, they add, that the economy was booming by 1997. It did the grey man no good, because voters were sick of him and had decided he was not up to the job. Hence, a new PM is needed, and fast.

So who is right? And what does it tell us about the chances of Mr Brown surviving two more years?

Well, for what it's worth, I don't think Labour can ditch a second unpopular leader within 12 months without the voters having a say at an immediate election - which Labour would lose. It would be electoral suicide.

In any case, the party's complex rules make it virtually impossible to oust a leader quickly. And, unlike a year ago, there is no obvious successor.

However, there can be little doubt that Labour will lose the next election - whoever is leader - without some dramatic change. The "hang in there, steady as she goes" attitude will fail.

What is needed is a spectacular policy shift.

Next week, I will try to outline what that might be.

WE are always told that Westminster is chockfull of MPs so desperate to climb the greasy ministerial pole that they will say or do anything.

Well, clearly no one informed Durham North's Kevan Jones, who is happy enough on the backbenches to rib his supposed superiors that they are chubby, roly-poly - fat, if you like.

This is Mr Jones addressing Defence Secretary Des Browne, and his number two Bob Ainsworth, on making another visit to Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I hope to return to both countries, if I can pass the strict fitness test that the MoD has implemented. Looking at the girth of both the secretary of state and the minister, I think I may be in with a chance!"