Mr Brown will do anything to stay in power

On Saturday, Gordon Brown was telling the Church of Scotland about his "personal commitment" to the "vision of the good society". Over the past few days, the inhabitants of Crewe and Nantwich have been learning a lot about the nature of that commitment. Voters have been woken up at 4am by callers pretending to be Tory canvassers. Four-by-four vehicles festooned with blue balloons have been careering through council estates: more pretend Tory canvassers. Above all, there has been a succession of smears and lies about the Tory candidate, Edward Timpson, and his family.

If Gordon Brown had any genuine interest in a good society, he could learn a lot from the Timpsons. Edward Timpson's father built up a successful business. As Mr Brown has always claimed to be in favour of hard work, thrift and enterprise, why is he not applauding the Timpsons? Gordon Brown also believes in good works. The Timpsons actually perform them. Over the years, they have fostered 86 children. That is not merely good; it is saintly. Last year, Edward Timpson's mother received an OBE for her work with children. Few awards have been more richly deserved.

Yet the main plank of Labour's Crewe campaign has been an attempt to portray the Timpsons as rich idlers. Early on, a Labour poster showed a photograph of Edward Timpson in a top hat. It was a fake; he has never owned a top hat. So the Tories complained. Labour then produced the same poster with Mr Timpson's face blacked-out and the slogan: "The Tories won't let us show their candidate's face. What else is he hiding?"

"Vision of the good society": Gordon Brown did not choke on his own hypocrisy. The only vision he has is the one that haunts him: electoral defeat. In his desperation to avoid that fate, he has instructed his associates to grovel in the gutter in search of muck to throw at their opponents. While he was oiling up to the Kirk, his associates were behaving like rabid weasels. Forget visions, forget values, forget ideas: forget a serious political programme. Above all, forget truth. Gordon Brown will do anything to stay in power. He will spit and snarl and claw all the way to the next election. It is going to be a profoundly demeaning process and, if there is any justice, it will not only bring down abiding discredit upon Gordon Brown, but also on the party which tolerated him.

So there is one obvious conclusion. It is in Labour's best interests to lose this week's by-election. A number of decent people in the Labour Party – they still exist – are thoroughly dismayed by the tactics adopted in Crewe. They are holding their tongues until the polls close. Then there will be calls for a court of inquiry. But if Labour scrapes home, Gordon Brown will conclude that class hate, smears and lies can work. Anyone who cares about standards in public life should be praying for a crushing Labour defeat.

But the significance of the Crewe campaign goes wider than Gordon Brown's repudiation of taste, decency and morals. It enables us to draw two conclusions about the current Labour Party. Labour no longer knows what it believes while many of its supporters are full of anger, which they substitute for thought.

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