Was that it? Gordon Brown’s speech was no launch-pad for an election or anything else. It was competent and workmanlike but its shopping list of initiatives recalled his duller budgets. The NHS saved his sight, he says. Maybe so, but biographies of Brown tell how frustrated he was with years of duff advice from the NHS while he feared he would go blind – before an (Asian immigrant) consultant managed to help him.
The rather muted ovation reminded us that the audience had grown used to Blair style oratory, which they won’t hear for a while now. Anyway, I can now understand why cabinet members were told to keep their speeches unsparky, and limited to seven minutes. It would be very, very easy to outshine that.
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