Show us your vision, Gordon

Gordon Brown called off an election to show us his vision. It's time he started doing so.



When Gordon Brown told Andrew Marr he wouldn't go to the country this year - nor next - in order to renew Labour's mandate to govern, he said:

"What I want to do is show people the vision that we have for the future of this country in housing and health and education and I want the chance, in the next phase of my premiership, to develop and show people the policies that are going to make a huge difference and show the change in the country itself."

And yet, it seems as if the only vision Gordon has is of personally retaining the keys to Number 10.

On inheritance tax and tax breaks for married couples, the government have stolen the Tories' clothes. On capital gains tax, they blundered and backtracked. On migrant workers, they have shown that they do not have a grip on the issue, nor a positive message for why migration is in the interests of Britian. On the latest EU treaty, Gordon has singularly failed to articulate the benefits of European membership, nor moved the debate from "do we even want to be in Europe?" to "what sort of Europe do we want to be in?" Instead, he will compel Labour MPs to force through the treaty without a proper debate.

If this is leadership, then it is second-rate.

Whilst the current government still represent the least worst option, they are in danger of being overtaken by a sort of complacency about a) the strength of their opposition and b) how they continue to demonstrate to the electorate that they have the ideas to drive the country forward.

The one thing I can't stand about Conservatives is the patronising way they assume they deserve to lead the country, without actually proving why. Looking at the direction the current Labour government is heading in, I'm seeing a similar arrogance. It reminds of me of the last line in Orwell's Animal Farm:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but it was already impossible to say which was which."

Labour were the future once. For all our sakes, it's time they started being the future again.