The trouble with this government is that it spends so much time governing. It is not political enough, not nasty enough, not cynical enough. The Tory caricature of an administration full of wind and spin, signifying nothing, is simply wrong: Labour in 2000 is a party of dogged administrators doing their level best to make things a little better - oh yes, and then there's Peter Mandelson. So while the Tories have been scoring cheap and easy points, the government has barely responded. It has bent over backward to be fair to a party that never let a minute of fairness cloud its strategy in power.

Take the Phillips report on BSE. There we have a tale of staggering incompetence and negligence. And what happens? The Agriculture Secretary, Nick Brown, stands up in the Commons, comes over all statesmanlike, and is so determined not to pin the disaster on the Tories that they can scarcely believe their ears.

Yet it was the Conservatives who first lifted the regulations on what could be put into animal feed. It was the Conservatives who hushed up the early signs of BSE passing to humans. Above all, it was the Conservatives who howled down far-sighted Labour critics at the time, such as Harriet Harman and Gavin Strang, and accused them of being traitors for daring to question the safety of British beef.

Or think about rail privatisation. You cannot, it is true, directly blame priva-tisation for the recent accidents at Paddington and Hatfield. But even the Conservatives have admitted that the way the privatisation happened, with the profusion of companies, caused profit and efficiency to be put before safety. From Bernard Jenkin, however, we get a quick, apologetic shrug, just like the one from Tim Yeo on BSE. The Tories reckon they can slide straight off the hook and straight back on to the attack against Labour for failing to run the railways better. The cheek of it. Yet there has been barely a murmur of accusation from government ministers. You can take bipartisanship so far, but surely this is stretching it a bit.

Now we approach the pre-Budget statement. The government is already sending out signals that the last thing it is going to be is political. Oh no, the government wouldn't stoop to politics: it's a very responsible government and will be driven by economics, the long term. No quick-fix buying off of popular protest movements, no risks, no pre-election cynicism. Well, a good number of Labour MPs hope this is wrong. There is no economic risk on the horizon half as serious as the political risk that, despite its poll leads, Labour might yet throw away the next general election. Responsibility? Labour's first responsibility to us all is to stay firmly in power.

Gordon Brown has, in the past, proved one of the most shrewdly political of Labour's senior figures, but the 75p pension increase and the rises in fuel duty were hardly his finest hours. What he and the Treasury team now need to understand is that the mood of the country is dark and angry, and Britain will not be appeased by the news that the national debt is being paid off.

Money may be flowing into the health service and may have been allocated to improve the transport system. But an unhappy coincidence of two rail crashes, the fuel protests and violent weather have combined to sweep away the feel-good factor. In Britain today, people cannot get to work, they struggle to pick the kids up from school, and they worry that they won't have enough petrol to visit ageing relatives at the weekend. And if the government cannot bring itself to blame the Tories for BSE or rail privatisation, it should none the less be in little doubt that people will blame today's ministers for today's troubles - yes, even for the weather.

For thousands of rail travellers, there has been a faint, but definite, echo of the winter of discontent. The rubbish isn't piled high in the streets, but easy mobility is becoming a distant memory. The mere suggestion of troops being drafted in to ensure essential deliveries to petrol stations adds to a sense that things in Britain have not got better: they are getting suddenly and dramatically worse.

Those outside the Treasury inner loop can only guess at the size of the unexpected surplus available for the pre- Budget statement on 8 November. Maybe it is £16bn, maybe less. But it is clearly substantial, and it must be used to maximum political effect.

That does not mean caving in to demands for a big, across-the-board cut in fuel taxes. The truckers should get a package that is generous enough to help them, but it should be combined with a full political assault if they continue to protest. No voter in the country should be left unaware of the help going to farmers each week - nor that, overall, British businesses pay rather less tax than their Continental counterparts.

Then there's the question of pensions. When I asked a Treasury adviser recently how it could possibly be that nobody had spotted the political consequences of announcing a 75p increase, he scratched his head and said: well, actually, that is what the politicians are for, isn't it? His job was to provide the economic advice. Exactly.

For too long now, politics has been left to the eggheads, who have very little sense of how anything will go down in the constituencies. The Labour government has closed itself off far too successfully from the Labour Party as a whole. Chancellors tend to get a great deal of gratification from being praised by clever commentators in the broadsheet news-papers. This year, Brown should regard that as an indulgence he can do without. He should recognise a dangerous moment when he sees one. He should act politically. If he doesn't spend now, his party will pay a high price.

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