Brown and his critics must admit their errors

Not even his severest critics doubt Gordon Brown’s intelligence. They might object to the causes in which it has been enlisted, but they knew that it is both formidable and restless. Nor do the Prime Minister’s critics doubt that he has a coherent vision of where he wants to take Great Britain, what sort of society he would like to create (the assumption being that it is in his power to do just that). Again, they might disagree on the consequences of striving for greater equality of income and wealth distribution, or the efficacy of stuffing an unreformed public sector with cash. But they have no doubt that Gordon Brown knows where he is going.

Nor, in their quieter moments, should his critics disagree with some of the policies he brought with him to No. 11. That’s when control of the economy passed to that address from No. 10, as a result either of a unique power-sharing deal between Prime Minister and Chancellor, or of the differing interests and talents of the occupants of the two highest offices in the UK.

There is little doubt that when New Labour took over from an exhausted Tory party the nation’s infrastructure had been starved for too long, the public services neglected, the nation’s economic policy in need of refreshment. Nor is there any doubt that Labour’s inheritance included the enormous asset of the Thatcher revolution: a largely privatised economy, trade unions finally obliged to defer to the will of Parliament as expressed in its legislation, and a robust private sector operating in a society in which success and wealth were no longer considered signs of criminal or at minimum economically predatory behaviour.

Enter Gordon Brown and his intelligence in the service of his vision of a society in which children would be rescued from poverty, entrepreneurs would be encouraged to create businesses by changes in the tax code, benefits would be distributed to offset some of the harsher consequences of the market, work would replace welfare and society’s social ills would succumb to a variety of programmes from state-provided early-childhood care to means-tested pensions for the elderly.