Dying embers of a flame that burned so red and so bright

NEXT week, in one of its most exciting initiatives for years, Scottish Opera launches an evening of five new 15-minute operas by contemporary composers based in Scotland. The one set in a Govan kebab-shop, for example, should give the idea of contemporary opera exactly the kind of jolt every art form needs, from time to time. But all the same, I can't help feeling a pang of regret that none of the creative teams involved – featuring writers from Alexander McCall Smith to Bernard McLaverty, a

For the longer Gordon Brown's ill-starred premiership continues, the more classically tragic it seems, this tale of a man unwilling to match his ambitions to his principles, or to the real nature of his gifts.

Gordon Brown, you may remember, started his career as something of a radical firebrand in the Labour party; the co-editor, in 1975, of the famous socialist Red Papers on Scotland's economic future. It's hardly surprising, of course, that his views became less radical with time; and two decades on, his historic Blairite compromise with market-loving New Labourism must have seemed to make every kind of sense.

But all the same, there is a bitter irony, this week, in the sight of this sometime socialist being forced to carry through the first real nationalisation of his career, against his will, and in desperately unfavourable circumstances; while an opposition front-bench of baying Old Etonians yell for his political blood, and try to stereotype him as the Old Labour dinosaur he has so ardently striven not to be.

Of course, David Cameron's Conservatives are not as impressive as they should be, facing a government so beset by problems. But the truth is that Gordon Brown now has no real political story to tell, beyond the old Blairite one about a fudge-filled "third way" between soaraway market capitalism and old-fashioned social democracy. And to fight a successful general election campaign without a convincing forward narrative, without a backdrop of continuing economic success, and without even a fraction of the large and enthusiastic grass-roots Labour Party membership that existed in 1997, is to rely on levels of error and incompetence among the opposition that even Cameron's crowd are unlikely to deliver.

So what were the fatal errors of judgment that brought Gordon Brown's once-brilliant career to this sad impasse? First, perhaps, throughout his Chancellorship, he showed a predictable tendency – having once decided to betray his old socialist faith – to take that betrayal a shade too far: above all, to suspend his once-mighty critical faculties in dealing with the recent huge financial sector boom, and the dodgy form of lending on which it was based.

Secondly, there was his failure to calculate how the coming of devolution, which he had long supported, would change the position of Scots at Westminster. Now, he is left brooding miserably over the future of "Britishness", at a time when the whole concept is at best debatable; and when the English desperately need a period of reflection on their own 21st century identity before they can re-enter negotiations with the other nations of the United Kingdom.

Then third, there was his failure to register the scale of the error Tony Blair was making over the Iraq war, and the extent to which the decision was based on lies and self-deception. Brown could have resigned at that point with his reputation high and intact, to the long-term benefit of his own career; but he did not. And then finally, even when the scale of the Iraq disaster became clear, Brown was too stubborn to admit defeat. He would still hold Tony Blair to the old Granita deal of 1994, and he would still be Prime Minister; even though it was half a decade too late, even though all the chickens were coming home to roost, even though the long period of economic growth and stability on which he had founded his personal reputation was visibly stuttering to a close.

And now, he seems doomed to re-enact that previous "Scottish" tragedy in which a man gives his soul for the crown he so desires; and then finds, in Shakespeare's words, that "to be thus is nothing", and that an army of youthful heirs and more legitimate claimants are already snapping at his heels.

Whether the Prime Minister can escape from his current impasse, and win the next general election after all, is of course impossible to tell; in politics, we should never say never.

But escape would require a burst of intellectual energy – a re-invention of social dem-ocracy, a new clarity about the respective roles of market and state – of the same force as the one that created those Red Papers a generation ago. And there is little sign that any such leadership is likely to come, now, from a politician so visibly oppressed by the daily cares of office; and so obviously surrounded by the burnt-out ends of a political project which once glowed brightly, but which now, in its dying, seems likely to make Gordon Brown, too, into a fallen hero, and one of yesterday's men.