Comment: Brown hits Tory heart of darkness
Gordon Brown in yet another 'speech of his life' moments
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By Matthew Champion. |  |
Tuesday, 29, Sep 2009 06:30
Gordon Brown is good at making make-or-break speeches, but then he does get a lot of practice.
By Matthew Champion.
David Miliband, who endured a confetti-strewn, banana-filled, Heseltine moment-haunted conference last year, told me after the speech that it was the best Brown had made since he became leader two years ago.
He's right; the highlight being a seemingly non-ending stream of New Labour achievements in the last 12 years that had the crowd on their feet within minutes after being introduced by his wife.
Using Sarah as a warm-up act seems a bit tired this year, compared to tacky in 2008. Her introduction brought new levels of shuddering to the media centre, but her attempts to humanise the prime minister in the eye of the electorate is a crucial task. He's not perfect, he's messy, he's noisy, but she loves him... and wants ever so much for the rest of the country to love him.
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Brown joked that the Labour party had finally learned to love Peter Mandelson, one of only three current Cabinet figures he mentioned by name - the others being Harriet Harman and Alistair Darling - but the task of getting the rest of the country to love the prime minister himself was entirely left to Mrs Brown, a wildly popular figure who has more followers on Twitter than Stephen Fry or the Labour party itself.
Today was about policy and extending the no-man's land between the political space Labour and the Conservatives occupy, as well as throwing in a couple of pitfalls.
The biggest is the Tories' response to the global recession and the most damaging is their position on the NHS.
"The only thing about their policy that is consistent is that they are consistently wrong," the prime minister said.
Some of the figures are alarming: In the tail-end of a brutal, unforgiving recession where the biggest losers have been normal workers, 29 million people in Britain are in full employment. That's two million more than in 1997.
In previous speeches the prime minister has lost his grappling battle with the bucking media, who waited with bated breath to press enter on Twitter when he finally said the word "cuts". Today he set the agenda for his speech, which was full of what he called values.
"Call them middle class values, call them traditional working class values, call them family values, call them all of these; these are the values of the mainstream majority... and I say this too: These are my values."
Mrs Brown was a case of history repeating and so was his reference to the health service which helped preserve his eyesight after a rugby accident in his youth.
But this time round the crucial difference was that he was saying it not because he felt he had to personalise himself in the eyes of the electorate but because it came laden with a powerful party political message.
"For us the NHS has not been a 60-year mistake but a 60-year liberation," he said with bitter reference to Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.
The looming juggernaut of the impending Tory government has been bearing heavily over the entire conference. But Brown hopes the colossus has feet of clay.
PMQ-time labels of the Tories being the 'do-nothing' party were wisely omitted, as was, strangely and possibly uniquely, any mention of David Cameron or any front-bench Tory at all.
Instead of vilifying the man who would be prime minister in his stead he turned the entire opposition into a political bogeyman that would lead to only one thing if returned to power. Another wasted generation.
This was the choice presented to the electorate by Brown in Brighton today.
"I don't think the choice could have been clearer, it's a choice of change, but it's the choice of change under Labour," culture secretary Ben Bradshaw told me after watching the speech. "The Tories don't offer any change they offer a return to the past."
Twelve years is a long time in politics; and for anyone under the age of 30 who has spent their adult life under a Labour government the prospect of a progressive Tory government might be a dangerously attractive proposition. Today Brown put the finishing touches to a dark landscape portrait of Britain under Cameron's Conservatives that has been painted throughout conference.
"They've deliberately held their cards close to their chest. They've done their best to conceal their policies and their instincts. But the financial crisis forced them to show their hand and they showed they had no hearts," he said.
"And so I say to the British people the election to come will not be about my future - it's about your future, your job, your home, your children's school, your hospital, your community... your country."
As a few sweeteners he also threw in an end to compulsory ID cards; the ability to recall MPs guilty of corruption; free personal care for people with the highest needs in their own homes as part of a National Care Service; legislation to force the government to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on international development aid; compulsory attendance at family intervention projects for 50,000 of the country's most problematic families; local banking services at the Post Office; and a pledge to force nationalised banks to pay back the British people.
A powerful cocktail of policy and dire warnings that went for the Tory heart of darkness; the stakes have been set dangerously high for Cameron, who you can guarantee will be ripping out large portions of his speech following Brown's address today.
The real test for the prime minister will be how he convinces the country to judge him on policy. The real test for the electorate will be if they stomach putting a cross in a Tory box next May.
Today Brown did all he could to make them repulse at the idea.