Leading article: The break with Blairism that is still incomplete

Thursday, 12 July 2007

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When the history comes to be written of Gordon Brown's first months as Prime Minister, yesterday may be seen as a key day: the day on which Mr Brown began his break with Blairism in earnest. The break was, for the first time, in matters of substance as well as style.

Responding to a direct inquiry from a Labour MP during Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Brown disclosed that the Government's policy on casinos and supercasinos was going back to the drawing board. "I hope," he said, "that during these summer months we can look at whether regeneration in the areas for the supercasinos may be a better way of meeting their economic and social needs than the creation of supercasinos." Here we heard the genuine voice of the son of the manse, expressing a view calculated also to soothe some troubled brows in Middle England, where concern about the consequences of more gambling has stubbornly refused to subside.

We have held no particular brief for or against casinos, either for their own sake or as tools of regeneration. What people choose to do with their own time and money, we tend to think, is up to them. Over the months, however, the supercasino had assumed a symbolic significance out of all proportion to the reality. With its surface glitz, its sense of get-rich-quick opportunity, and its association with the caprice of the free market, it somehow embodied the less acceptable face of Blairism. As the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Tessa Jowell had striven to present the government line, without much evidence that her heart was really in it.

Yesterday, Mr Brown executed a U-turn. Low key it might have been in presentation, but it was a U-turn nonetheless - and a repudiation of something that was quintessentially Tony Blair.

The Prime Minister's "summer statement" that followed was a higher-profile statement of change, but one that, in fact, contained more ambiguities. There were tactics here as well as substance. On the face of it, Mr Brown's decision to institute such a statement as a precursor to the Queen's Speech in the autumn was a welcome departure. Not only does it suggest that he is serious about restoring the authority of Parliament, but advance publication of the Government's legislative intentions affords time for a genuine exchange of ideas. No move that fosters transparency should be spurned.

But there may well have been more to Gordon Brown's "summer statement" than this. At a time when David Cameron's Conservative Party is entering its policy-discussion phase, with the conclusions of his separate policy groups to be presented to the party conference, it is in Mr Brown's interests to show that his Labour Government has some policy-making momentum of its own.

Mr Brown's difficulty is that the legislative agenda he presented yesterday offered more continuity than change. This was especially true of his much-vaunted priority: housing. It comes as no news to anyone that more homes are badly needed. And while we applaud the Prime Minister for concentrating first on the development of brown-field sites, he evinced little recognition of the hard choices that will be necessary when environmental and housing demands collide, as they inevitably will.

Nor did he once acknowledge that he shares at least some responsibility for the current situation, including the harsh climate in which first-time buyers must compete. It is all very well for him to promise three million more homes by 2020, but it is today's young families that need them - and Mr Brown was Chancellor for 10 years. He must now move with as much speed and determination as he has over casinos if any of that lost time is to be made up.