There has always been a strong moral streak to support for the Labour Party. Put simply, Labour is supposed to be the ethical party, and the Conservatives the greedy, the venal, the “nasty party”, the party of power and inherited privilege. The Tories are the ones who invite General Pinochet to tea – and Labour people are the ones who arrest him.

So when the party leadership’s moral compass seems to go badly awry – taking donations from the pornographer Richard Desmond, waging war in Iraq, proposing 42 days’ detention without charge for terrorism suspects – it strikes many natural Labour supporters as a double betrayal. And it is against that background that some of the events of the past weeks come not just as a disappointment – but also as a profound shock to many.

Of all the criticism levelled at the leadership in the past week by senior Labour figures – “lamentable” (Hazel Blears), “void” (David Blunkett), “one last chance” (Frank Field), it was Charles Clarke’s “ashamed to be a Labour MP” that must have hurt the most. Mr Clarke may sometimes appear as little more than a disaffected opportunist, but what he said resonated among those who worry that a party which is “a moral crusade or it is nothing” is hurtling towards electoral disaster. Accusations of incompetence can be handled. But immorality is altogether less easily ignored.

So let’s deal with the accusations in turn. First, incompetence. The YouTube U-turn was unfortunate, but not unforgivable. The Prime Minister should be given credit for attempting to communicate with the voters. At least friends of Labour can comfort themselves that – albeit rather late in the day – Gordon Brown had put himself on the right side of the argument over MPs’ expenses. Since then he has addressed the electorate again via YouTube, delivering a party election broadcast with greater success.

If incompetence and arrogance were the sum of the government’s failings then that would perhaps be excusable. But in the past month there has been a slew of stories of an altogether more unpleasant order: stories that tell not just of administrative incompetence, but of moral decline. It began with the Damian McBride affair. The story was alarming because it exposed an unethical and ruthless intent at the heart of Mr Brown’s Downing Street.

The Gurkha vote again found the government morally wanting. That the vote was lost – a significant coup for Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats – is in some ways beside the point: just another whipping bungle. No, the real shame lies in the fact that the vote took place at all, and that Labour found itself on the wrong side.

The same applies to Trident. Labour supporters are rightly perplexed when a golden opportunity – in the shape of an economic crisis – appears to allow Mr Brown finally to make the right decision by scrapping the expensive and pointless replacement of Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

But time itself seems out of joint when it is the Tories, not Labour, who take the opportunity seriously. Indeed, while senior Conservatives – even Nicholas Soames – seem prepared to countenance a future without Trident, Mr Brown waffles on in the Commons that “we wish to use the fact of our deterrent to bring about non-proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the world”. No wonder Mr Clarke is ashamed. And there is no sign of improvement. Indeed, the evidence from the past week’s refusal even to consider compromise over the Post Office privatisation suggests that Mr Brown is determined to continue down the same path. Devoid of the ability to communicate his vision to the nation at large, Mr Brown is stumbling to disaster. A prime minister who cannot even impress or unify his cabinet is hardly likely to win voters’ trust.

Nevertheless, the reality is that Mr Brown is the party leader, is likely to be the leader at the next election, and even – if the whispers are true – intends to remain leader after any election result. And so next year’s general election could well be carnage for Labour of a sort that could push the party out of office for a decade. The local and European elections, which are being held on the same day, 4 June, will no doubt demonstrate how unpopular the government has become. If Labour is not to be wiped out at the next election by the hugely unimpressive Tories, the leadership of the party must try to regain moral authority. We repeat: the party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing.

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