Leading article: Out with the old, in with the old?

Overlapping with the long goodbye, the long hello. Last week, we were introduced to a new Gordon Brown. Over the next six weeks, this paradoxical figure will make himself gradually better known to us. He is a paradox because he is so well known, yet so shrouded. Ever present over the Blair decade yet, especially when the going got tough for the Prime Minister, ever absent. He is a paradox too because he is given huge credit for the prosperity and economic stability of the past 10 years, but it is a negative achievement in two senses. It was built on abdicating the power to set interest rates, and its most important measure is that he has managed to avoid making a mess of the macro-economy, which no long-serving chancellor has managed before. Not only does he have a reputation for solidity and competence, but he is also regarded as a stealth-taxer and a pensions-stealer.

Now he faces the huge task of overcoming not only his own negatives but also the much greater dead weight of the mistakes, the rancour and the sense of exhaustion inherited from Tony Blair. On Friday, he made a good start. His demeanour was different enough from that of the introverted juggernaut of the past to persuade us that he could rise to the challenge. But not so different as to imply an inauthentic makeover.

Of course, he will never be able to shake off the terrible mistake of Iraq, and he does not try to shirk his share of the collective responsibility. But he did speak on Friday of the need to "learn the lessons we have to learn from the last few years" in the Middle East. One of those lessons is that no British government should ever again become so closely tied to the partisan policies of a US administration, and it was encouraging that Mr Brown also said last week, in an interview with Time magazine, that "with both parties in America relationships are strong".

It is important to learn the lessons of the Iraq disaster by finally holding the independent inquiry into the Government's decision to go to war that Mr Blair has resisted. But it is even more important to bring some new thinking to the difficult and linked questions of what to do now. How do we get out of Iraq without exposing the Iraqi people to even more of a bloodbath? How do we reduce the overstretch of British armed forces so that they can focus effectively on the battle that is worth fighting, in Afghanistan? The answers are still shrouded in Brownian mystery, although it may be that there are no simple changes to the Government's policy that would yield certain results. In that respect, Mr Brown is likely to remain a prisoner of the recent past.

This newspaper is also eager for enlightenment as to Mr Brown's thinking about global warming. Of our leading politicians - Mr Brown, Mr Blair, David Cameron and David Miliband - the Chancellor is probably the least convincing green. He urgently needs to use his voice, as he ascends the prime ministerial pulpit, to persuade the British people that saving the planet is not a London middle-class conspiracy to put up taxes, stop them driving and ban foreign holidays. His plans for five new carbon-neutral "eco-towns" that we report today is, again, a promising start.

The third important issue for the incoming prime minister is more intangible - that of well-being. Mr Cameron has been adroit in identifying an increasing concern with the non-material components of the good life. He has spoken of a bundle of issues that are close to the heart of this newspaper: the decline of civility, the quality of family life and the need to reassess attitudes towards mental health. So far, Mr Brown has almost nothing to say about these subjects, apart from some old-fashioned platitudes about duty.

In a radio interview yesterday he referred to himself as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the past tense, and spoke of how he felt "liberated" by being allowed to speak about his plans for the whole of Government. But it is a constrained form of liberation, because he needs to balance his solid virtues against the growing appetite for change that has yet to decide what form change should take. This is his moment of greatest danger and greatest opportunity.

So, Mr Brown, tell us, what is new?

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