One of Tony Blair's worst nightmares is fast becoming reality, according to YouGov's first regular monthly survey for The Daily Telegraph.
In the mid 1990s Mr Blair and his colleagues watched with delight but also horrid fascination as John Major's government fragmented internally and seemed to lose all control of events.
Now Mr Blair's own administration is beginning to give the same impression. According to YouGov, ministers are no longer "on message". Indeed, there no longer appears to be a message.
Partly as a consequence, Labour support has dropped sharply, with public confidence in the Government's competence and integrity also in free fall. For only the second time in a decade, Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck on the crucial issue of economic competence.
However, Labour's slide has so far not been matched by a resurgence in the Tories' electoral fortunes. Conservative support is no higher now than at the time of the last election and the main beneficiaries of Labour's decline continue to be the Liberal Democrats.
YouGov's findings raise the possibility that the Conservatives' worst nightmare could also become reality, with the Liberal Democrats overtaking them as Labour's principal opponents.
Iain Duncan Smith's impact as Conservative leader - like William Hague's before him - continues to be nil. How much actual damage his presence inflicts on the Tories is open to doubt but he is in no conceivable sense an asset.
A mere 15 per cent of voters now think that Mr Duncan Smith "would make the best Prime Minister", fewer than half the proportion who think the same of Mr Blair. The Tory leader trails well behind the Liberal Democrats' Charles Kennedy.
YouGov's findings paint a devastating overall picture of a Labour Government that once prided itself on being confidently - and visibly - in charge of the nation's affairs, one that people could trust. The present Government, once solid-looking, now looks flakey.
Barely a quarter of voters, 27 per cent, believe Mr Blair and his colleagues have "on balance, been honest and trustworthy" - the lowest figure, by a wide margin, since Labour came to power. More than twice as many, 65 per cent, now believe this is an administration that cannot be trusted.
The Government is also seen as divided. YouGov asked: Do you have the impression that the Blair Government at the moment is speaking with one voice or many conflicting voices? The majority of voters have noted the disarray in ministerial ranks over Iraq, student fees and other issues:
Speaking with one voice......16
Or conflicting voices......79
A large majority of voters have also taken note of the long-standing but now acute tensions between 10 and 11 Downing Street. YouGov asked respondents to give their impression of the current state of relations between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown. More than two thirds appear to have heard the news:
Very or quite friendly......21
Somewhat or very strained......69
The Government also conveys the sense that - as under John Major's government in the 1990s - events are spinning out of its control. YouGov asked: Do you have the impression that the Government at the moment is or is not in control of events? The answers speak for themselves:
In control of events......25
Not in control......69
However, Mr Blair's troubles go well beyond matters of image. Almost as many people now give the Conservatives the highest rating on economic competence as take the same view of Labour.
Only in September 2000, during that month's nationwide fuel protests, have the two parties been so close in recent years. The explanation lies not so much in any mounting faith in the Tory Party as in the widespread sense that the economic outlook is increasingly gloomy with the present Government at least partly to blame.
The feelgood factor - the difference between the proportion of people believing their household's financial situation will improve over the next 12 months and the proportion believing it will deteriorate - now stands at a depressing minus 26, worse than in Mr Major's last years in office and easily the worst since Labour came to power.
Beyond that, YouGov's findings make it clear that Labour's advantage over the Tories on a wide variety of other issues has either narrowed substantially since the last general election or else disappeared altogether.
Labour led the Tories on all but one of the eight principal issues that faced voters at the time of the 2001 general election. According to the latest survey, Labour now leads on only four of them. Labour has forfeited its leads on Europe, law and order and, perhaps most significantly, taxation.
On all the other issues, the gap between the two main parties is now far smaller than it was two and a half years ago.
However, lest Conservative supporters make too much of YouGov's results, it is an equally striking finding of the latest poll that on these issues as well as others it is the Liberal Democrats who have made significant gains.
The Liberal Democrats are now actually ahead of the Tories on both the NHS and education. The fine print of YouGov's data suggest that almost no voters are switching directly from Labour to the Conservatives.
Far more - many of them on the Left wing of the party - are switching to the Left-seeming Liberal Democrats or else telling YouGov they are now undecided.
YouGov elicited the opinions of 1,949 adults across Great Britain on-line between Jan 28 and 30. The data have been weighted to correspond to the demographic profile of British adults as a whole.