Gordon Brown’s promise to fit broadband in every child’s home is eerily familiar of Tony Blair’s promise many years ago, when still leader of the Opposition, to link up every school in the land with a fibreoptic cable, courtesy of BT. Whatever happened to that cable, I wonder. At the time, The Spectator majestically described the policy as “Newt Labour” – a nod in the direction of Newt Gingrich who, in the wake of the 1994 Republican congressional revolution, was promising radical democratisation via technology. “Let them eat laptops,” was the mocking liberal headline.
Whatever else Gordon says today, I am delighted that he is now a convert to the joys of webworld. He used to ask visitors to Number Ten whether they “liked the Internet” – as if it were an exotic dish or a football team facing relegation. The bibliophile Brown’s default position is to be suspicious of the web which he fears may be a university for terrorism and an engine of pornography. But he is slowly coming round to the good stuff, too, a development that was pleasingly on display when he gave his speech at Google Zeitgeist earlier this year.
In all this, I detect the hand of Tom Watson, the Cabinet Office minister and longtime member of the PM’s inner circle, and Watson’s hugely intelligent and entrepreneurial friend, D-J Collins, who is one of Google’s key players in Europe but also a seasoned political operator in his spare time. Hat-tip to them, and to Gordon 2.0
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