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reports that Gordon Brown was touring the Commons tea-room following his relatively successful appearance at Prime Minister's Questions.

Remarkably, it seems, this was the first time Brown had been spotted in the tea-room - a favourite haunt of Labour MPs - since he became prime minister almost .

A common theme of Mr Brown's Labour critics - both Blairites and on the Left - is "He never talks to anyone". Unless he absolutely has to, of course, as during the revolts over the 10p tax cut and 42 days. This, of course, is not the Gordon Brown people were presented with when he stood for the leadership last spring, and was elected unopposed.

Only 34 Labour MPs didn't nominate him (indeed an unreported quirk of that election is that Brown was nominated by a majority not just of Labour MPs, but a majority of ALL MPs on the British mainland - once one strips away the Speaker and his three deputies: 313 nominations out of a total of possible 624 MPs).

Labour backbenchers were convinced last spring they were getting a new leader who would listen to them a lot more than Tony Blair. Party activists felt a lot more comfortable with a leader who was meant to have been steeped in the This Great Movement of Ours and all its traditions - the biographer of socialist firebrand Jimmy Maxton, rather than a leader who was sent to a public school and whose father was an active Conservative. And the unions were certainly convinced they'd see a lot more of Gordon than they ever did of Tony - just as they had when Brown was Chancellor.

All are now bitterly disappointed. One former top Labour official even told me this week that "Gordon and the Labour Party are now totally separated".

Another common point made by both the Blairites and the Left, is that Mr Brown needs to broaden his government. First in choosing a wider mix of ministers - politically, and in terms of backgrounds.

Brown they say, has continued the Blair tradition of choosing his top ministers from the ranks of former Cabinet advisers, whilst letting great talent languish on the backbenches - MPs with long experience of running big local councils, for example, or who have held top-level jobs outside politics.

The bigger point, they say, is that Brown simply needs to listen to his natural party allies a lot more - backbenchers, trade unionists, and even ministers, get them involved in policy making, make them feel part of the process. In short, the argument goes, Mr Brown needs to do what he promised a year ago.