Plans for a radical new extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum have been mothballed. It's a wasted opportunity on a grand scale and the V&A is to blame

Is the Spiral dead? Has the V&A given up the ghost on its most spirited design initiative in decades? Is the museum, seemingly unloved by the Heritage Lottery Fund and central government, spiralling downwards in the public's esteem? These are some of the questions spinning around this "extremely capacious handbag", as the former director Roy Strong once described the eclectic national shrine of the decorative arts in London's South Kensington.

Clearly something has gone wrong. In 1996, the museum announced plans for the dramatic Spiral gallery designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect of Berlin's sensational Jewish Museum. An iconoclastic design challenging the Victorian fabric of the existing building, the Spiral sent the museum spinning into the media spotlight. Outrage! Horror! "The Guggenheim in Bilbao turned on its side and then beaten senseless with a hammer," squealed one broadsheet critic. Yet with gradual support from a wide range of critics, and from English Heritage, the erstwhile Royal Fine Art Commission and the solidly Tory London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the Spiral, a £100m showcase for contemporary and future design, won surprising hearts, suspicious minds and planning permission. That was in 1998.

Then something happened - or, rather, didn't. Under the thoughtful directorship of Alan Borg, the museum did its best to raise funds from both the private sector and government. It has raised £31m from the former, but has had far less luck with the latter. This summer, the chance for government funding ran out. It was turned down for the last time. The museum, if it wants to proceed with the Libeskind-designed extension, must either do so on a shoestring or spend years looking for a golden goose.

It should have been on the receiving end of Lottery funding in the late 1990s rather than fishing for funds today. Sadly, while other capital projects were soaking up Lottery cash, the museum wasted valuable time getting rid of Borg, looking for an acceptable new director, floundering around at trustee level and missing the Lottery boat.

By the time the V&A had its new director in place (Mark Jones, in 2001), the Arts Council Lottery Fund was no longer Lady Bountiful - at least, not when it came to major new buildings. The Heritage Lottery Fund, the great white hope of Spiral supporters, hummed and hawed, but eventually rejected it. Fair enough: the Spiral is not the stuff of heritage. It could be argued that a gallery given over to contemporary design is concerned with our future heritage, and that the V&A is also making a connection with its original role of encouraging business and public to manufacture and buy the best in contemporary design. But that's not an argument that will wash with the Heritage Lottery Fund.

This is sorry stuff. Why did the V&A dilly-dally when so much was at stake? Because Borg had to go. Whether silly or not, he gave a press interview staunchly in favour of museum charges at a time when Chris Smith, the then secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport, was determinedly against them. Accessibility was new Labour's cultural buzzword, and free admission to major museums and galleries was one of Smith's missions. In came the new-Labour-friendly Paula Ridley as chairman of the V&A's ramshackle body of trustees. Out, after machiavellian machinations, went Borg.

Jones, not a Spiral enthusiast, was brought in as the new director after a protracted hiatus. Meanwhile, the Lottery caravan, laden with riches, had moved on. Politicking and dogma had cost the V&A dear. With his well-polished shoes under the director's desk, Jones metamorphosed into a Spiral supporter, but it was now hard to raise money, even after a tremendous amount of work. Reports were written, fundraising dinners eaten and heartening parties held. Libeskind himself played an energetic role, drawing together potential patrons as well as giving bubbly interviews to the press. This was the time to build the Spiral, to pull in cheques from golden handbags. But, no.

The balloon burst. Neither the new director nor the trustees, despite the recent arrival of such patrons, luminaries and energetic gadabouts as Tim Sainsbury, Lisa Jardine and Marjorie Scardino, could inject fresh blood into a project that had become a casualty of cultural politics and general faffing about.

In recent months, Libeskind has scaled down the Spiral. The latest design looks more like an earthy potato than a spirited vortex. This is not the building the V&A needs or wants. What it wants is a building on the scale and with the ambition of the original 1996 design, but brought up to date. A cut-down Spiral will neither inspire patrons nor work for curators running the V&A's energetic contemporary programme. And there is no point in adding to the flamboyant historic fabric of the existing museum (principally the work of Alfred Waterhouse) with anything less than an equally uplifting design.

If you were the V&A's chief press officer, you would want the Spiral to go away, for a bit anyway. And yet, while the story has been an unfortunate one, it has focused the museum's attention on the need to project and present new design. And so, while the Spiral controversy has ebbed and flowed, the V&A has been, much to its credit, rebuilding itself quietly and steadily. Gwyn Miles, the museum's indefatigable head of major projects, has seen through the reconstruction of the £30m British Galleries, designed by Dinah Casson and David Mlinaric, completed in 2001 and recipient of the 2003 European Museum of the Year Award. Its counterpart, the new Medieval and Renaissance Gallery, is scheduled to open in 2009.

Next month, a new Sculpture Gallery designed by Eva Jiricna will be unveiled. In November, the new Architecture Gallery and Study Rooms will open in collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects. The museum's gardens are being landscaped afresh by Kim Wilkie. A Miniatures Gallery, also by Jiricna, and a revamped Islamic Gallery, by Softroom, are also in the works. By the end of the decade, a huge and co- ordinated programme will have transformed this capacious South Kensington handbag.

What will be missing, though, is the Spiral. Or, at least, the Spiral as originally conceived. It is surely the time for the government to step in. It has, after all, talked long and hard about the importance of design and the "creative industries". This is what the Spiral project has been concerned with all along.

The V&A and government, with support from private patrons, might yet sit down and talk while the dust around Spiral Mk 1 settles, and work together to create the most forward-looking design gallery of all, in a place where British design and industry were so creatively and profitably linked 150 years ago. The Spiral is dead. Long live the Spiral.

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