Politics reporter, BBC News
"The public do seem to have switched off. Not necessarily from the government as a whole but they don't seem to be engaging with Gordon."
 Mr Brown has promised help for families hit by rising prices |
He may not be one of nature's Brownites - in fact he recently added his voice to calls for the prime minister to quit - but former spin doctor Lance Price has a knack of putting into words what Downing Street must be fearing the most at the moment.
Mr Brown is getting ready to stake his political future on a package of economic measures aimed at helping families through the credit crunch.
All manner of goodies have been hinted at - from a stamp duty holiday to one-off windfall payments to help with winter fuel bills.
The idea is to show voters Labour is "on its side" - that it is looking out for "ordinary people" - and hopefully provide some relief from some of its worst poll ratings in history.
Mr Brown's future as prime minister may rest on the reaction it gets.
But the fear for the government is that the public will fail to give Mr Brown any credit for his largesse - or simply shrugs its shoulders and change the channel.
"Even when he does something that should be ostensibly popular, no one is listening," says the former Downing Street man.
"That is a very dangerous position for the government to be in."
'Dreadful area'
Some Conservatives see parallels between Mr Brown's problems and their own party's predicament in the mid-1990s.
"They're entering that dreadful kind of area where almost everything they say and do is automatically rejected," shadow local government secretary Eric Pickles told The Financial Times.
"I am not saying they're entirely there but they are beginning to sink without a sign of the bottom."
