Building Britain's future: The morning after

As usual with Brown one must wait for the dust to settle before the truth emerges following the rehashed re-launch of old policies.  The Times reports:

Gordon Brown has raided the health, education and transport budgets to fund 30,000 extra “social” homes in a hastily assembled re-launch heavily influenced by Lord Mandelson.

There was immediate confusion in Whitehall last night as departments appeared not to be aware that they were supposed to be funding the £1.5 billion centrepiece of the Government’s pre-election fight back.

Just more of the same from Brown.  Not even Mandy can change our leader’s ways  If that wasn't enough to put a dampener on the start of Labour’s election campaign or Brown’s last stand, then Rachel Sylvester has more:

Privately, many ministers are in despair. “There is nothing there,” says one. “We’re going to be out of power for years.” One of Mr Brown’s longest-standing supporters in the Cabinet admitted to a colleague recently that he had made a mistake. “I knew Gordon’s weaknesses but I thought they would be lessened by becoming Prime Minister, and that his strengths would increase,” he told his fellow minister. “I was wrong.”

“It’s dressed up in the language of empowerment but it’s nothing of the sort,” says a former Cabinet minister. “Yet again it’s Government by focus group, a hotch-potch of policies with no unifying theme.”

A Cabinet minister, who is loyal to Mr Brown, says: “It’s a bit like when a husband has an affair. It’s not enough for him to buy his wife a bunch of flowers; he has to really prove that he’s changed.”

In conclusion:

The next election campaign is going to be a cynical and dirty fight. Now it is clear why: the party has no really substantial positive plans for the future. In his inauguration speech Barack Obama said: “We have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over discord.” Mr Brown is clinging to fear and dividing lines because he has still not found a message of hope.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there will be more clever trickery to be revealed during the long march to the polls.  The OECD paints a grim picture of the economy and then we have the little matter of our public servants mismanaging projects.  Not exactly the headlines those in the bunker will wish to see this morning.

U-turns, re-launches, smoke and mirrors, half-truths, dividing lines are the order of the day and for the next nine months, as Brown and his unhappy Cabinet tell us it will be alright on the night.  There is no strategy, just short term fixes to wrong foot the Tories in the forlorn hope that the polls will move and Labour, against all the odds, can scrape home.

When Brown says, ‘I am seeing the country through the recession’ he means ‘I am seeing Labour through to the election’.  The irony for us voters is that we will all pay dearly for these failed policies for years to come.