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Brown's Room For Movement
We discussed last week how left-wing commentators were urging Gordon Brown to introduce ambitious reforming legislation before he is ejected from office. At least then, they say, they'll remember him as a radical failure, rather than just a failure. Now another has taken Brown to task for his cowardice. Jonathan Freedland admits he was among those who couldn't wait for Brown to edge Tony Blair out of office.
He speaks of Brown's "great dreams for the country,"
"Those who met him left convinced he was ready to act big. Surely he would pull all the troops out of Iraq. Or he would be ambitious on constitutional reform, driving through a fully elected second chamber or leading Britain, at long last, towards a written constitution. Others imagined that he would solve Labour's cash woes - and the party is currently too broke to fight an election - at a stroke, by introducing state funding of political parties."
Freedland argues Brown's moves towards Constitutional Reform were timid (actually, we'd argue the latter). But that demand that there is still time for a final, doomed push is still there:
"Even now, if he ditched the triangulation and crude stunts, pushed a programme of two or three large, bold policies, and told a convincing story about getting the country through economic turmoil - if he did all that, he could still turn things around", he continues.
Turn things around with whom? The electorate? Or those commentators like Freedland and Polly Toynbee? Brown is already pushing ahead with the hugely unpopular ratification of the EU's Lisbon Treaty. The danger for Brown if he follows this advice will be that he leaves office not as Britain's most disappointing PM, but its most loathed.
Still, it's interesting to see that these demands for radical leftist legislation keep coming. It demonstrates that the Guardian's commentators may not be in touch with the public's opinion, but that they've certainly got the measure of Opposition leader David Cameron. Cameron could make it clear that, in the event of him becoming Prime Minister, he would disband any constitutional committee Brown set in place and repeal his most radical legislation. But he hasn't, and the columnists know he won't.
Brown is freer than he thinks.
