Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Jon Cruddas - the star of this year's conference according to Jackie Ashley - writes in his Coffehouse diary that Brown's speech "nailed it", in part because he was more "emotionally literate" this time round. Cruddas reckons the space for the coup plotters has been shut down and anticipates a "mass defection of Labour’s Taliban to the Tories next week".
Brown's "this is no time for a novice" line will of course be the one most people remember. Double rewarding, as Iain Dale notes, because it can be interpreted to apply to both Miliband and Cameron. And following Ruth Kelly's resignation, which has somewhat overshadowed the reaction to Brown's speech, might it not apply to her as well?
The line that really stuck out for pro-Brown blogger Paul Linford though was "United we are a great movement". This, he hopes, signals a return to the idealism of the pre-Blair Labour party when the phrase "This Great Movement of Ours" was widely used by its leaders.
Dave's part - also on the left - takes a more sceptical view, suggesting that any speech that bangs on so much about "fairness" and being "fair" "is at high risk of either banality or simply meaninglessness". Even by the bare minumum standard of "fairness", Dave notes, contemporary society under Labour falls far short.
The Times has an interesting set of verdicts, including that of Phil Collins, former speech writer to Tony Blair, who sums up the problems with Brown's economic analysis: "Opponents were caricatured as laissez faire dogmatists or command and controllers. And the trouble with Brown as the Third Way between Trotsky and Ayn Rand is that everyone is a third way between those two." (Blair, of course, would never descend to the level of caricaturing his opponents, would he Phil?)
Also worth checking out is Daniel Finkelstein. He argues that the Government's present unpopularity spells not just the end of Brown, but of the whole New Labour project, digging up a ten-year-old analysis he wrote for CCHQ to explain why.
hamewith (not verified) said:
Thu, 2008-09-25 15:55Most of the speech was dire, a string of cliches and sound-bites strung together with nothing much. It picked up towards the end but only by invoking such recent New Labour innovations as the NHS.