Neal Ascherson (London, writer): After the first few days, it's clear that this isn't going to be simply Blairism in a bass voice, or Tony without the cap and bells. Gordon Brown is beginning to move off that course and plot his own. How far it goes, where it ends, one can only guess. But this much is suggestive: his Queen's Speech preview yesterday was about gearing up what remains of state power to do heavy lifting work in the NHS and in what's left of public housing. This fits with his wider concern to restore trust in government and, more important, in the political process. It fits because, in my view, the underlying cause for the decline in popular commitment to that process is the simple fact that the state has withdrawn so far in the last 30 years from visible engagement in matters that affect daily lives and ordinary concerns. Democracy is about the people controlling what the state does. And it follows, pretty obviously, that if the state does less, public interest in influencing the political process falls away too. Brown isn't going back to social democracy. But he is at least moving in a promising direction.
The promises and hints about constitutional changes mostly amount to a menu of sensible, overdue corrections and reforms. They do not add up to a real transformation of the power structure, and I will be astonished if the talks about Bills of Rights and written constitutions emerges as more than another list of those vapid 'British values'. Conspicuously, they say nothing so far about either personal liberties or 'the English question'.
But the disjointed nature of these suggestions comes as something of a relief - to me, at least. I remain deeply sceptical about the whole 'Britishness' platform. Any all-British blueprint for a new constitutional framework runs the danger of reducing the pace of the convoy to that of the slowest ship - England. The situation at present is that Scotland is moving fairly rapidly and creatively towards forming its own constitutional arrangements, which may or may not end in independence. Nothing should be allowed to obstruct that, and the piecemeal nature of Brown's reforms suggest that they won't add up to an obstruction (some of the procedural reforms are already normal practice in the Scottish Parliament).
The 'English Question' apparently remains unaskable, in the Brown discourse. The pressure for an English parliament, for instance, is considered to be utterly incompatible with Brown's 'Britishness' vision of a more integrated UK under a happy forest of Union Jacks. Yet English discontent is rising, and it won't go away. And it's worth pointing out, to those who say that nobody bothers about constitutional matters down in the 'Dog & Duck', that this is one area where English people have begun to show vigorous interest in a constitutional question - whether or not they yet realise that this is its description.
