Economy is key to revival of Gordon Brown's fortunes

15 May 2008

The Times, Peter Riddell, 15 May 2008

The centre ground is getting crowded. Yesterday we had the second instalment of Gordon Brown's useful innovation of a draft legislative programme, allowing time for consultation and debate before the Queen's Speech in roughly six months.

This was not just a chance to see the first completely Brown agenda (the last Queen's Speech being partly inherited from the Blair era). It was also about the dividing lines between the parties: and here it gets confusing. Mr Brown has a consistent and clearcut strategy, far more of one than his critics allow. The State has two main roles: to help to make the economy more competitive and flexible in a globalised world, and to intervene to assist everyone to make the most of their potential.

But in Bermondsey, South London, yesterday, reading through his speech — more coherent than his indigestible Commons statement — Mr Brown's eight themes could easily have been endorsed, and expressed, by David Cameron or Nick Clegg.

Mr Cameron was in two minds in his response to Mr Brown's programme. At first he sounded miffed that Mr Brown had adopted so many Tory ideas: a dozen including policies on education, health, policing (directly elected local representatives), help for first-time buyers, giving voters greater influence over local spending decisions, matched funding for national savings and new powers to rescue banks.

The trouble with stealing clothes is that no one is quite sure who designed what, and what the distinctive Tory label is. Talk about the “post-bureaucratic age” has hardly helped, and is not, I am sure, heard often on the streets of Crewe & Nantwich.

Nick Herbert, the Shadow Justice Secretary and author of the police commissioners' idea, offered a definition in a speech this week to the Reform think-tank, which he founded five years ago. Mr Herbert argued that Whitehall interference, and scepticism about markets, is stifling the reform programme. He exaggerates his criticism of the still expanding academies' programme, which is why it is still being opposed by the teaching unions and Labour councils. But he has a point: the Brown team has old Fabian instincts that state intervention is inherently good, with Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper as the Sydney and Beatrice Webb of our day.

All main parties support giving patients and parents more say. But what does Mr Brown's talk of “tailoring services to fit each of our needs” really mean? Is it customer convenience or real choice? Mr Herbert is right that the key is “clear lines of accountability and the alignment of incentives”. But this has to be more than just trusting the professionals, otherwise GPs would not open surgeries in the evening. Overall, the Tories now offer an alternative on schools, welfare and prisons, but less clearly yet on health.

The key to the Brown relaunch and Labour hopes, however, lies less in such proposals than in the economy. So Mr Brown's most important measures were those to steer the economy through the downturn and to help housebuyers. Mr Brown was candid and correct to say that he expected to be judged by his stewardship of the economy. It is a demanding yardstick.