Brown wants to go back to 1997

Is Bagehot thinking what what Brown is thinking?  Is Our Dear Leader really wishing he could turn the clock back to to those long lost days.

Our man from the Economist gives two reasons why Brown has suddenly gone for AV:

One is simply that the Tories are against it. That has enabled Mr Brown to erect one of his beloved “dividing lines”.

  He’s got that right, but then we get to the second reason:

Or, perhaps, the fact that this new move is a revival of a promise Labour made in 1997 is, in a way, part of its appeal. At bottom it is a bid to turn back the clock—to the time when Labour seemed capable of being a force for meaningful change.

Can this be true?  Perhaps Bagehot has out his finger on it.  After all these years of being such a destructive force, does Brown now admit that where he was wrong, Blair was right.

There must be some mistake, surely.