Patricia Hewitt fought back the tears. It was 11.10am on Friday, and the trade and industry secretary was in the Transport & General Workers Union’s Birmingham office. The night before, she had announced that MG Rover, one of the biggest employers in the Midlands and the last British-owned volume carmaker, was to close. It was a political disaster for Labour, and now she was in Birmingham to comfort some of the 6,000 MG Rover workers and thousands of others in supporting industries who might lose their jobs — and to talk to 10 Labour MPs worried about losing their seats at the general election.

She was 30 minutes late to the meeting, and her voice quavered as she began to speak. She ostentatiously wiped away a tear. “I am sorry,” she said. “It has been a very bad week. I hardly slept last night thinking about the workers.”

The tears failed to impress. One MP said: “She very quickly composed herself and gave a lucid account of why it was not her fault.”

But Hewitt’s reaction demonstrated the full horror for the government of MG Rover’s collapse, a fact underlined by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown racing to Birmingham on Friday, the prime minister arriving direct from the Pope’s funeral.

The nightmare began on Wednesday afternoon when Hewitt heard the news she had been dreading. Her team of negotiators half a world away in China had received a final, polite “no” from Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, China’s biggest car company and MG Rover’s potential saviour.

The day before, Blair had called the election, and Labour now faced going to the polls with perhaps as many as 12,000 workers being thrown on the dole across a dozen marginal West Midlands seats, and the government being blamed for failing to save the company. Labour was to unveil its manifesto in a few days — in Birmingham, MG Rover’s home town.

In the end, the government’s offer in Shanghai of a £100m bridging loan made little difference. The Chinese had made it clear two weeks earlier that MG Rover’s finances were too shaky for a proposed joint venture to go ahead. Hewitt’s inquiries, made by accountants KPMG, had reached the same conclusion.

Hewitt passed the bad news to Blair, who was eager to defuse the first potential bombshell of the election campaign. He spoke to his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, for 20 minutes, but in vain. He then called Brown, and the pair had dinner that night with Tony Woodley, general secretary of the TGWU and a key figure in the campaign to support MG Rover.

As Blair was briefing Woodley, workers on the second shift at Longbridge, MG Rover’s famous Birmingham plant and one of the spiritual homes of the British car industry, were finishing the last cars of the day. They were not to know it, but the vehicles may have been the last cars off the line, the end to a century of manufacturing history.

On Thursday, still nurturing a slim hope that a deal might be worked out, Hewitt answered questions in parliament, but then received the chilling news that MG Rover had halted production. Nearly 70 suppliers had stopped sending components, fearing they would never be paid. A crisis meeting was convened at DTI headquarters. At 8.45pm rep-orters waiting in the Atrium bar in Westminster were asked to be ready for a press conference. At 9pm Richard Burdon, MG Rover’s local MP, hurried in to be given the bad news. At 9.20pm, John Towers, MG Rover’s chairman, called from Shanghai to say administrators were to be appointed. At 9.30pm Hewitt, clearly shaken and close to tears, made the announcement that it was all over for Rover, a grim-looking Woodley at her side.

Even the announcement caused a row, the company pointing out that administrators had not yet been appointed, while DTI officials were embarrassed that Hewitt had called them “receivers” — a term her department had abolished.

On Friday afternoon, Price Waterhouse Coopers, the accountancy firm, was appointed as administrator to the two main MG Rover companies, and it was all hands to the pump. Blair and Brown flew to Birmingham to join Hewitt, with Blair insisting an arrangement could still be reached with the Chinese. Yesterday officials were hinting a buyer could be found for the MG sports car operation, which could save more than 1,000 jobs.

Inside the plant, the mood of the workforce, who had endured many false dawns in Rover’s recent rollercoaster history, had turned ugly. At a mass meeting of production workers, shop-stewards strained to make themselves heard. As they shouted that Woodley was trying to save their jobs, they were met with angry cries of “bullshit” and “bollocks”.