There is, by no accident whatever, a lot of Gordon Brown around at the moment. The Prime Minister and his political rhythm section may even be available for weddings and funerals. Name a price. They are certainly happy to entertain (in no particular order) Andrew Marr, the Today programme, selected Sunday newspapers, breakfast telly generally, Westminster correspondents serially and anyone stuck in a Royal Marsden hospital bed. Distance and credibility no object. The show, says a none-too-subtle sub-text, is back on the road.

Like a dull weather front on the horizon, this was one you could see coming. The people whom Mr Brown allowed to promote the notion of a snap autumn election - put that on the CV, why don't you - have been reconceptualising the brand. Their jobs and his significance were at stake. So the Broon is Back. And this time it's serious.

Damage, like public-sector pay, must be limited, always. Having made an auspicious initial public offering, Mr Brown's stock went through the floor. Neither phenomenon has been understood adequately, as yet, but the consequential gist is easy to digest.

First, if affection for the Prime Minister, or at least amused tolerance, does not resume soon, Westminster Labour is in trouble. Mr Brown's "team" has managed to make David Cameron seem credible. In the process, it has put at risk its patron's chances of stand-alone election. It has also raised questions of legacy and leadership. None of this was in the least bit necessary.

Secondly, there is the fact that the Prime Minister - not to mention the rest of us - has a tough year ahead. Northern Rock could yet seem like a fleck of foam on the crest of a nasty wave. Many things - several the direct consequences of decisions taken by a Treasury minister named Brown - could return to haunt a country already stressed by global forces.

A Prime Minister named Brown won't be able easily to blame those, or a Chancellor named Brown, for everything. This year, even the stupid will remember how to spell the word "economy". And they might just hold the man who for a decade shaped their taxes, mortgages, credit card bills, pensions and hopes responsible. These are not yet the worst of times. But they are not the best times in which to be Gordon Brown, Prime Minister.

That takes us to the third point. If you seek to relaunch a political brand, you should first define the commodity, and its unique selling points. Mr Brown wishes, I think, to be seen as trustworthy and reliable. He considers his experience of power an asset. He, or his advisers, might want to ask Hillary Clinton how that one plays when voters are nervous, or bored, or tired, or hungry for a "change" they cannot quite define.

How would you reinvent Gordon Brown? Or rather, should you, if you happen to be Gordon Brown, succumb to the kind of fickle 21st-century whimsicality that demands the ghastly, dishonest process of "reinvention"?

I could, by my particular lights, nail this Prime Minister for any number of things. A war criminal by proxy: that would be a start. Mr Brown did not take us into Iraq and Afghanistan, but he sat on his hands, in Cabinet, and signed the cheques thereafter. He could get us out of all that now, but instead prepares our armed forces for a presence in the Afghan deserts that will endure beyond my lifetime. In the name, astoundingly, of Keir Hardie's party.

Or poverty, local and global: he promised all, delivered nil. In particular, the man who once upon a time published a book entitled Where There Is Greed declined, often ostentatiously, to address the greasy mechanisms of avarice and impoverishment. Still does. Worse, he serviced, and still does, the PFI/PPP scam that will be 2008's £100bn (and counting) story. Sometimes the dots, with no regard for syntax, join themselves.

You could say that Gordon Brown is paying a kind of Sophoclean price, these days, for all the brooding hubris of yesteryear. You could say it - add the environmental charlatanry, the epic hypocrisy towards devolution and the sheer lust for power - but I will not. This instead: who else have you got?

A banal question, but a serious one. New Labour has survived for a long time with a frighten-the-weans threat: if not us, them. Vote for us, or it's the other lot. We may be crooked, somewhat. We might fumble, often. We might grovel to the super-rich, out of habit. We might launch the odd, very odd, war. We might have Balkanised your NHS, mortgaged the future of your children, turned you all into thievable identity "data" and fibbed, every once in a while.

Still, you wouldn't want the old Thatcherite nightmare, though, would you? Mr Cameron is cut from that old dark cloth: Nightmare II, the Quiff, but with the usual vast unemployment, the usual social distress. So it's us, right?

The intent is deplorable, but the inquiry is reasonable. A Tory or a near-Tory: pick a card. A Scot can vote for independence, clearly. People in the province or the principality can elect to resume autonomy. Nevertheless, for as long as the United Kingdom continues to function, Mr Brown's relaunching will matter. New Labour has nothing else in the locker.

Greens, whom I sort-of respect, will not form a UK government. Liberals, God and psephology willing, will be prevented from power. Real nationalists should not wish for Westminster honours (a joke for another day), or for Westminster control. The existing reality involves Mr Brown, Mr Cameron, interest-rate decisions and the ability to start a war.

The Prime Minister has a slightly pleading air, just at the moment, in his many media appearances. A complicated man is attempting to say simple things, and is finding the job difficult. He is not, actually, a born liar, unlike predecessors too obvious to mention. His Stakhanovite brain tells him that a three-year public-sector pay deal is just common sense. A glib world says: "Pay restraint? Ask the library for a blurred snap of Jim Callaghan."

New Labour does not grasp it yet, but Mr Brown is their best, last and only hope. That formulation applies, equally, to the odd entity we still call a United Kingdom. Cameron is a nationalist prayer answered: the baying pack at his back will do a job for Alex Salmond at the snap of old Etonian fingers. In the real world, though, stuff will continue to happen.

Relaunch Mr Brown? About time, I'd say. Sack the "team", not the coach, for one thing. Begin by getting each and every one of our children home from each and all of those stupid wars. That will catch some eyes, I promise.

Then say what you actually think about Europe, Mr Brown, just for once. Then eat a few of the ghastly rich for breakfast. If only to encourage others. Then tell the next occupant of the White House that you govern on behalf of a sovereign country.

Then renationalise the Bank of England because the people must always, for better or worse, control their own destiny.

Nothing in this little January tale will ever happen, of course, but that will be a Prime Minister's problem, not mine.