British prime minister Tony Blair is facing what looks like an orchestrated push, writes Michael White.
Is this the last big shove? If Gordon Brown succeeds in his accelerating ambition to inherit the Labour leadership, is there a greater risk that his party will succumb to the kind of feuding which bedevilled the Conservatives for 13 years after Margaret Thatcher was sacked? This is Brown's gamble, and it is a huge one.
Suddenly it looks as if Mr Brown is going to get his wish sooner than the August 2007 timetable Mr Blair has come to envisage. If undignified haste makes it look illegitimate to even a minority in Labour's ranks it could fester as Mrs Thatcher's ejection did, especially if both sides blame each other for the final crisis. And they do.
Labour MPs on both sides of the Blair-Brown divide, who watched the Tory "civil war" and remember their own in the 1980s, do not want another one. Some believe that even at this late stage Mr Brown should pull back from forcing the prime minister out, a powerplay that would tempt Mr Blair's supporters to "wreak their revenge" for years to come.
Sensible advisers around both men know it is in both their interests to reach an agreement on the handover. Alistair Darling and Lord Falconer were designated dealmakers for the two sides yesterday. So far, it does not look like it is working. Mr Brown's mistrust is deep; his silence eloquent.
Partisan Blairites, convinced that, as one put it, their hero "is being monstered out of office" by a ruthless campaign, think compromise is already too late. "We are witnessing the death of New Labour," one said yesterday. Many gut loyalists think it is all over with Mr Blair and are preparing to be loyal to Mr Brown.
Tom Watson, the junior minister whom 10 Downing Street thinks orchestrated the letter circulated by Blair defectors Chris Bryant and Sion Simon, is not in that camp. A rotund ex-trade union fixer, he is a paid-up Brownite. Yesterday, Mr Watson managed to jump before Mr Blair pushed him, denying the PM even this vestigial display of authority. Six unpaid ministerial bag-carriers jumped too.
It all smacks of another orchestrated push, the latest in a long line of scrums carrying the Brown forwards towards the No 10 touchline. Blairites think such tactics are the cause of the government's unpopularity and under-performance. Brownites point to Iraq and Lebanon to explain the 31 per cent low in the polls.
They also insist that the past week's uproar was not pre-planned. Their trigger was Mr Blair's ill-judged London Times interview, during which he intended to hint that he would be gone in a year without explicitly saying so.
That defiance was bad enough, but for some MPs the real offence was Mr Blair's claim that the largest group opposing him wanted a change of policy direction.
"That's just not true. It reinforces the Tory message that New Labour ends with Blair and undermines the unifying process that will help us win the election," one said.
In other words, the provocations are all Mr Blair's, the round robins and "Blue Peter" e-mail merely the response.
We shall learn more of what has been going on behind the scenes when Mr Brown's style of leadership is exposed to daylight, as it will be.
But he demonstrates what one wannabe Brown loyalist calls "a misplaced lack of confidence", fearful of a contest.
If there is to be a long "War of Blair's Succession" it will start if, after all, a heavyweight does run against him. No one doubts his victory within the Labour family. Contest or not, what Mr Brown has to do urgently is demonstrate a sunny and open nature to the wider electorate which will decide his fate - master strategist or Blair footnote? - in 2009-10. As his wheels spin in the mud, No 10 believes their man needs nine months to deliver his agenda and that this week's froth, as they see it, will again subside. But it is getting harder. Even Groundhog Day ended eventually.
- Guardian service