Headline-grabbing U-turns aside, what has PM Brown actually done, asks richard ehrman
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All incoming Prime Ministers can reckon on a honeymoon, especially when their predecessor has run out of road in the way that both Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher did. But with the Tories all over the place, and the media eating out of his hand, Gordon Brown's first month in Number 10 must have surpassed even his most optimistic hopes.
The new prime minister, it is generally agreed, has moved rapidly to address the many negative perceptions of both himself and his party left over from the Blair era. To rebut the charge that he is a centralising control freak, we have an administration 'of all the talents', and the promise of a humbler, more accessible style of government.
To counter worries that he will be an American poodle like Tony Blair, we have the assurance - albeit only from a junior minister - that the days when the US President and the |
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| For all his talk of a conversation with the public, it is remarkable how little Brown seems prepared to discuss |
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British Prime Minister were 'joined at the hip' are over.
Yet apart from the demise of the Manchester super casino, it is hard to find signs of real change. And for all his talk of a 'national conversation' with the public, it is remarkable how little Mr Brown seems prepared to discuss. While reforming the constitution will, apparently, be one of his priorities, he has already made it crystal clear that anything to do with Scotland or devolution, or even the House of Lords, is off the table.
In fact Mr Brown is not even going to honour Labour's manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the new European constitution. Nor will there be any reconsideration of identity cards. And just to make absolutely clear who is really in charge - and probably also to reassure the Americans - while Parliament has been promised a vote on any future war, it will not be getting one anytime soon on either Iraq or Afghanistan.
It is much the same story with domestic policy. In both education and health,  |
