Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Well, the first thing to say about Brown's speech is that he enjoys the job and this shows. Blair loved the glamour, he wanted the prize but not the work. Major was out of his depth. Thatcher had a similar passion for the detail and willingness to listen to an argument... until she made up her mind. (Maybe there will prove to be a similarity there as well.)
The speech was a display of strong Britishness for the media - and hard policy for the party: this is where I have come from, this is where I want us to go, making the state an active, personal support to help deliver potential for all those who try, rather than a passive welfare safety net. Serious stuff on education (see Sunder Katwala's Much Left article on how "today's unequal outcomes shape tomorrow's unequal opportunities").
There was a horrid passage about throwing out foreigners who are caught committing crimes - what no appeal, leaving a family fatherless if Dad is caught smoking a joint? There was no sense at all that to be British [addition, apparently 71 references!] today may well mean being from India and is not just about being white. While the many passages about aspirations and the fulfillment of talent looked forward, the implicit definition of Britishness looked backwards and was closed rather than open (see Michael Keith for a different approach to cohesion).
I felt it laid the basis for an election: telling the country who he is, admitting to his being visually disabled but with dignity and setting out a programme on core issues. The hot potatoes went untouched: the referendum demands, Scotland, defeat in Iraq, so-called citizen juries and the participative side of the 'new politics', in short how the Britain to which he cleaves has a future. Their days will come. This day was Gordon's.
UPDATE: How as it for the other side? Interesting contrast in the Spectator Coffee House between Fraser Nelson being not-uplifted and Matt d'Ancona on the force behind Brown's positioning, reading the PM as saying,
I understand how hard life is, what it is like to earn everything you have and achieve - unlike the foppish, privileged potheads in the Tory Party who dare to think they can run the country. In a subliminal sense, he was playing the class card in every sentence, implicitly contrasting the supposed Cameroon Britain of ease, privilege and inherited security with his own Britain of strength, fair play and hard work.
I feel Matt gets it right
