As a Silly Season exercise, let us imagine what might have been had the Labour Party chosen Gordon Brown instead of Tony Blair as its leader in 1994?

Let’s assume that he had won the election in 1997 with a 40-seat majority — Gordon isn’t the stuff of which landslides are made.

Tony Blair would probably have been given the Foreign Office, allowing him plenty of opportunities to scour the world for freebie holiday venues — and keeping him out of his master’s way.

Would Gordon still be PM in 2008?

If he had put up a straight bat — Geoffrey Boycott style — he would almost certainly have won the 2001 election. The Conservatives were simply not ready for office. Even a man with all the charisma of a sedated walrus could have won that, although probably with a reduced majority — let’s say, 25.

In those days Brown didn’t have the reputation of the Man in the Iron Mask, locked away in the Treasury for 10 years in a long sulk matched only by Edward Heath’s — a fellow traveller with similar psychological characteristics.

And we wouldn’t remember him going from Batman to bit-part player in 12 months either. He would have had the benefit of the doubt, not to mention the unusually benign economic conditions of the past decade.

Dour Gordon might just have hung on in there for two Parliaments on gravitas and “the economy stupid”. But what about the third general election, in 2005?

I don’t believe Brown would have risked the Iraq war, as Blair did just to stay onside with the American President. His ratings wouldn’t have flatlined overnight in the way his predecessor’s did. Somehow Gordon would have kept his head doggedly above water and achieved a reasonable result against Michael Howard in “the dullest general election in British Parliamentary history”. Let’s give him a majority of 6.

So here we are, back almost in the present day with Gordon Brown still in power and Blair long since gone to the lures of Political Big Brother and other c-list game shows.

David Cameron now comes on the scene and challenges the old walrus. “I am the heir to Brown,” he declares while arriving at the House of Commons in a sledge drawn by huskies. “Vote Blue, ditch Brown” he yells across the dispatch box.

It’s now 2008, with the economy falling apart from the American sub-prime crisis and a hapless Geoffrey Robinson, Chancellor for eight years, getting all the blame for Britain “not fixing the roof when the sun was shining.” He resigns and is quickly replaced by Brown’s closest ally, Alistair Darling.

The Prime Minister is a mere five points behind in the opinion polls with everything to play for. True to form he hangs on until early 2009 — just before the full force of the recession bites.

Gordon will never be a national treasure. He may be a Treasury type, but never a treasure. Nevertheless, the public admires his quiet persistence over a decade in its service and goes to the polls in two minds about him and the young Etonian pretender, David Cameron.

It’s a hung Parliament. Brown invites Nick Clegg, the new Liberal Democrat leader into a Lib-Lab pact and he accepts, eager for office.

Cameron prepares for more years in opposition, secretly believing he will never win against the formidable Brown.

“How I wish Blair had won the Labour leadership back in 1994,” he confides to wife, Samantha. “He would never have won a single election. They would have seen through him right from the start.”

Confusion in the ranks seems to be par for the bourse where Gordon Brown is concerned — how many column inches can we get out of this man?

Teeming circus troupes of performers are now consulting their I Chings and pronouncing judgement on the rotting corpse of Brown’s political career.

As I write, The Times (London) is reporting that David Miliband (read, goggle-eyed Gollum) and Harriet Harman (read, Mad Hattie Harperson) are plotting the ultimate coup against the once greatly-to-be-desired leader. But the views of many other noted commentators are all over the place like Rorschach tests from a football crowd.

Let’s take the tour.

Matthew Parris in The Times (London) declares any revolt against Brown is all chirruping and twittering and will amount to nothing at the end of days. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, looks deeply into a pound of cheddar cheese in his fridge and, like a Roman soothsayer reading chickens’ entrails, pronounces Brown safe from the Brutus faction.

While Peter McKay in the Daily Mail entreats Brown to “bow out gracefully”, quoting Robert Browning’s Lost Leader — Never glad confident morning again. A return to Victorian values at last.

However, Janet Daley, in the Telegraph, warns that a newly-anointed four horsemen of the apocalypse could arise from Labour’s ashes to destroy David Cameron’s dreams of electoral glory. Counter-intuitive, that one.

Uber-loyalist, Polly Toynbee of the Guardian, admitted almost tearfully on Newsnight last evening that it’s all over, and poor, dear Gordon, in whom she had invested her very soul, was a total duffer and had to go. While a fellow acolyte on the same programme almost, but not quite, tore off his red rosette in despair.

The feeding fanaticism continued over at the Observer, where that elegant rune-reader Andrew Rawnsley, damned Brown as a dead man walking.

Peter Oborne in Saturday’s Mail broke the news that David Cameron’s people are talking to Alex Salmond’s people about how an SNP administration in Scotland could work together with a Tory set-up in Whitehall. Apparently, as two middle-class, patriotic parties, they could get along just fine, forming an alliance to wipe the Labour Party off the map of Britain — or Anglo-Celtic Albion, perhaps — he’s not called Cameron for nothing.

Simon Jenkins weighed in on Sunday, applauding the idea of an Anglo-Saxon England, devolved from Scotland. Ancient counties and churches could presumably be revived without the nasty socialist influences from north of the Border. England would be richer and might even pull out of the European Union.

The great Lockean libertarian William Rees-Mogg in Monday’s Times thought Miliband a British Obama, but even so, Labour should choose “Hillary” in the person of Hattie Harhaddock. Are we beginning to go ever so slightly mad over this little local difficulty?

There’s so much more of this around, and in the most sober of British circles too. Richard Littlejohn, for example, positively reins in his excitable steed, saying, “Some people are speculating that New Labour now faces annihilation. So what? Works for me.”

Either it’s the annual Silly Season, or something really is afoot here. I still think Gordon should call an immediate general election, if only to allow Cameron and Salmond to form their cross-border coalition and bring peace to this benighted Isle. The Union is dead, Long live the Union.

One thing’s for sure. Regency England is alive and well — and kicking like a mule.

He came, he lingered awhile, then he left. I know he was here because I had a glimpse of him in Horseguards Parade with Gordon Brown, and saying a few words outside Number 10.

Oh, and he had a photo-op with David Cameron — the next Prime Minister — beside Big Ben (right), when Cameron presented him with a CD by The Smiths, apparently called “The Queen is Dead” — a very strange choice for a Tory leader.

But it was that kind of visit. Barack Obama was at pains not to look like a President-in-waiting to the folks back home, while presenting himself as just that to the foreign dignitaries he met. A weird psychological balancing act by any standards.

So how did he do?

About as well as he could have done in the circumstances. A black man as a potential President is a new experience for everyone. We all assessed him in our own way. I was struck by how unlike other black American politicians he is. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson both had that Alabama feel about them. A bit downtrodden, slightly angry, and from the other side of the tracks.

Obama is not like that at all. He comes across as an urbane, Harvard-educated, East-Coast liberal. There’s an elegance and poise about him that suggests he’s comfortable in his own skin, and not a trace of resentment against anyone. He reminded me of a typical English gentleman — without the accent.

I’m not too taken with his platform speaking style, though. It begins to grate a little after a while. His delivery is in short bursts of well-prepared sound-bites with a falling cadence at the end of many sentences and phrases. The predictability of this creates a mannerism which detracts from his meaning.

I much preferred Hillary Clinton’s style, particularly in the final speech of her campaign which, if you removed the over-done feminism and the achingly-Left liberalism, was of true Presidential calibre.

The final impression I had was that only Obama’s politics stand in his way now. If his voting record in the Senate is anything to go by, he may be just beyond the pale of electability to most Americans.

It’s certainly all to play for. McCain is a solid, if unexciting, candidate. It will take a real touch of class from Obama to beat him.

Reading through today’s Sunday papers feels like surveying the aftermath of the battle of the Somme. Around 20,000 British soldiers lost their lives there on the first day alone. A further 30,000 were wounded. Gordon Brown must surely count himself one of the walking wounded after recent events and may even be wondering if he hasn’t died and gone to hell.

He should take heart from those who went before. To historians, desperate situations are more interesting than great victories. They throw up extraordinary characters and tales of heroism against the odds.

Leaders are rarely magnanimous in victory — as Churchill urged them to be. Mostly they lord it up and preen in their assumed glory. A back against a wall reveals more of the moral fibre of anyone than easy accomplishment. Churchill himself is the perfect example.

So what can Brown do now to escape the deep, dangerous hole he finds himself occupying?

He can soldier on, of course, crying out his familiar very-sub-Shakespearean mantras: “Carry on with the job. Long-term decisions. Global solutions. International action … etcetera. He should face up to the fact that oratory and original thought are not his for the taking in this dark night of the soul.

Just hanging on in there, though, is a perilous position for him. It would surrender the initiative to his enemies. In effect he would be placing his fate in the hands of every opponent who has a grudge against him — and there are many.

On the other hand, he could simply resign. Walk away from his troubles as if they never existed. Retire to the life he loves, of books, academia and history.

Ah, history! Wouldn’t it remind him of how little he achieved as Prime Minister, how dismally he is placed in the league table of British leaders? At least Anthony Eden won a general election before he impaled himself on the bayonet of Suez. Harold Wilson won three elections in his long march to the bankruptcy of Britain. Clement Attlee won a landslide victory and didn’t remain long enough to see out the economic disaster that resulted from his Marxist nationalisation spree.

No, Gordon would be rated one of the worst Prime Ministers of all, mainly because he brings his many failures as Chancellor with him. His honeymoon to hopeless clown within 12 months is hard to match in recent history.

That doesn’t leave many options for our unhappy leader, does it? Well, yes, it leaves one. Big, brave and gloriously counter-intuitive, Gordon could confound the lot of us by emulating Marshall Foch.

When French HQ radioed Foch and asked for his position at a crucial battle in World War I, he replied, “My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack.” And attack he did, taking the enemy completely by surprise.

If I were Gordon I would announce an immediate general election. It should be in the minimum timeframe possible — three weeks on Thursday — the Labour Party has no money left to fight an election. Who cares? Who needs useless posters stuck up everywhere? As Prime Minister he would command all the screen time he wanted. Minor expenses could be funded from the few usual suspects remaining, including a couple of friendly unions. The fact that it is August could work for him if he plays his hand astutely.

He would instantly backfoot both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who would not be prepared for an election. He would begin to win plaudits from the papers and political commentators for his “courage” — and not before time. The electorate would grudgingly admire his pluck — a favourite quality for the British. Many would see him anew, and admiration would not be far away. As an underdog, the Brits would line up behind him again in increasing numbers. He would be the talk of the town. Even David Cameron would have difficulty in matching the fighting, no-more-boring Mr Brown.

But would he win? I doubt it. The best he could do would be to claw back some support to deny the Tories the landslide they now see beckoning.

If he could close the gap to a 30, 40, 50 seat majority for the Conservatives, he would be a hero in Left-liberal circles and a formidable Leader of the Opposition. The newly energized Labour ministerial team might clean up against a tentative and inexperienced Treasury bench. David Cameron would be hard-pressed to gain traction for his new administration of which so much is expected.

Of course, Brown could crash out badly and be forced to resign anyway. But at least he would have fought his corner with attempted distinction and gone down in a fanfare of glory. The Charge of the Brown Brigade against impossible odds. The Brits would love it.

That may be the best he can hope for.