Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Politics

What’s so special about 2020? Brownism is all about postponement

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 7th November 2007

Gordon Brown lacks urgency and only picks fights that he knows he can win.

It took the Queen only eight minutes to read the speech Gordon Brown’s advisers had prepared for her and even she looked bored by the end of it. The Prime Minister may have waited ten years for this chance to set the parliamentary agenda, but one searches this Queen’s Speech in vain for any sense of direction or drive. It was a compendium of mainly old policies, in which a wider ‘vision’ was always difficult to discern. Instead, it was a speech remarkable for what it did not contain.

Gone is the sense of adventurism. Under Tony Blair, the Gracious Speech gave notice of his next series of battles with his party. One could look at his proposed Bills, and pencil in the date of impending backbench rebellion as he pursued his strategy of pro-market reform of the public services. Especially towards the end, there was a palpable sense of urgency, and a sense of a man who knew the clock was ticking. Mr Brown, by contrast, seems remarkably happy with the status quo. He is proceeding with a leisurely, almost glacial pace.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (1)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Scary Biscuis

November 10th, 2007 12:45pm

In the shadowy but nontheless real, Labour leadership election last year John Reid said that if Gordon Brown had policy suprises then he should let people know what they are. The argument being that people could then judge his policies and 'vision' on its merits. Back then, the fear was that people wouldn't like his dashing new policies. Yes, the Bank independence was a nice surprise but others in the same style may not be so ammenable. Now, the slowly dawning terror is that the real reason that Brown kept his ideas so secret wasn't because he was afraid of them being copied but simply because he didn't have any.