He has lost a fellow Scot who represented the constituency next door to the Prime Minister's own Kirkcaldy base. Mr MacDougall's death will also have caused the furrows of Mr Brown's brow to deepen further.

Glasgow East was a disaster for Mr Brown but the loss of Mr MacDougall's seat of Glenrothes to the Scottish Nationalists this autumn would be worse. It could well ignite the flames of an uprising in the Labour Party which, as David Miliband so blatantly made clear, needs only a spark to become reality.

For the Prime Minister to be knocked from his perch by the voters of Fife would have a pleasing symmetry to the English, who will be aware that the Scottish voters will at least have a clear issue on which to cast their ballot. Independence for Scotland under the Nationalists or continuation of the Union under whoever takes over from Mr Brown, before Christmas or next year, is a simple, even stark, proposition to take into a by-election.

If only things were so simple in England where the message, the messengers and those for whom the message is meant appear to be growing more confused by the day – a situation which has not been helped by Parliament's lengthy summer recess.

Unlike the Scots, the English do not face a single-issue decision whenever the General Election comes; we do not even have a choice of policies. We know that New Labour have become virtually unelectable on the basis that their Brown-based complacency, their certainty that the economy was strong enough to withstand the rigours of any global downturn, has been exposed as myth. Their only policy is now one of individual self-preservation.

The Conservatives – under a leader whose apparent ambition is to be another Tony Blair – are not communicating. If they have a message, it is not getting through. If they have policies, they remain secret. Yet the next election could be just months away. It is not as though they have not had ample time to define the areas in which they intend to persuade us. There is a dangerous vacuum developing.

Earnest soundbites, any amount of spin, choreographed "photo opportunities" and hectoring at the Despatch Box (good fun though the latter often is) are not enough. It is time for a little old-fashioned politics. It is not so long since the parties involved in elections, be they national or local, knew what they stood for. Maybe a return to those principles would be a step forward.

The thought of standing up in front of a live audience – not one filled with members of the local Con Club, all ready to applaud at a signal from the stage – and explaining what their party would do if elected, would have your average candidate quivering.

Debate on the hustings is, sadly, on the verge of becoming a thing of the past; so are those evenings (they always seemed to be in winter) when nationally-known politicians would travel to the provinces and put forward their party's arguments, hopefully to swing a few of the listening audience into voting for their man or woman.

In those days, it was one of the duties of a young, shorthand-equipped reporter on a weekly newspaper to pay full attention to what was being said, then write a lengthy article on proceedings for the benefit of those who had been unable to get to the hall. Everyone interested had the opportunity of finding out exactly what policies were being espoused and why.

When local government elections came round, your councillors and those who sought to take their places, knocked on doors and talked to people, explained their ideas and told us what they and their party would do to make life a little better in our ward.

There were no newsletters, full of smiling faces and bland little stories highlighting some kind of "local success". Politics was in your face, a personal thing with the opportunity to argue and present opinions which might run counter to what the candidate was saying.

But the main plank of any debate was that we knew what the parties represented. There was no mistaking the agendas of Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Gaitskill and Michael Foot (although Harold Wilson was a little
shifty at times) or Harold Macmillan, Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell (again, there were some doubts over Ted Heath). The party set the policy and the individual went out into the country and told us what it was.

Now no-one – New Labour or Conservative – seems to know what policy is on any given issue and how it might differ from the opposition's, so there appears little chance of the electorate finding out.

It would be easy – and justifiable to a degree – to blame the media. Triviality seems the order of the day with little room or time for serious debate. It is now more important for a politician to race round any number of TV and radio studios and utter the same platitudes to each than it is to stand up and explain accurately, without obfuscation, exactly how they and their party plan to proceed.

That requires honesty, clarity and awareness of what concerns the voter; qualities which seem no longer fashionable in politics.