The vision thing
Cordon Brown managed to keep a straight face last month when he claimed that he was abandoning plans for a snap election because he needed time to spell out his 'vision for change'. The rest of the country, it must be said, was laughing at this nonsense, knowing full well that it was polling evidence that had changed the Prime Minister's mind. But let us take Mr Brown at his word: he explicitly invited the electorate to judge him not only by his competence, but by the scale of his ambitions and political philosophy. The Queen's Speech on Tuesday was intended to impress voters with its sheer sweep, as well as with the 32 individual measures it launched.
This was a curate's egg from a son of the manse. Some of the proposals are to be welcomed with varying degrees of caution. Mr Brown is undoubtedly right that fresh measures are needed to confront terrorism, and that an extension of the pre-charge detention period will be required. The Tories have misread public opinion and ignored police advice on this matter. It may well be that 28 days is already a high threshold for a developed democracy, but few developed democracies face a homegrown terrorist threat as advanced and complex as Britain's.
After the 7 July atrocities, investigators spent a full fortnight merely gaining full access to the sites of the attacks and a further six weeks to complete forensic inquiries. In a world of global Islamist conspiracy, computer encryption and fiendishly complex forensic tasks, the demand for longer detention time is not draconian but a practical response to an altered threat. This will be a hugely controversial parliamentary battle — but the PM should stand his ground.
Mr Brown also deserves a hearing on 'Britishness', citizenship and allegiance, issues that will be addressed in a draft citizenship and immigration Bill before Christmas, as well as a draft statement of British values next year. It is true that, historically, the British way has been to avoid overt discussion of national identity and to assume that this identity is understood by all citizens, as if by osmosis. Sadly, that assumption is now misplaced. The pulverising pressures of demographic change, the ideology of multiculturalism and the decline of traditional history teaching all mean that there is a daunting backlog of repair work to be done: Mr Brown is right to try.
In other respects, however, the Queen's Speech resembled a shopping list rather than the basis for a better society. The extension of the definition of 'hate speech', new fertility entitlements for gay couples, the vague promise that those who protect themselves from attack and use 'reasonable force' will be 'fully protected': these and other measures were transparently aimed at appeasing specific lobby groups or responding to focusgroup anxieties.
On 'flexible working', it is hard to reconcile Brown the self-professed champion of low-regulation capitalism with the Prime Minister now suggesting that employees should have the right to demand time off work to help 17-year-old children with examinations. Work-life balance' is threatening to become a tyrannous slogan rather than a desirable objective. Employers in any decent society have responsibilities to their employees, especially regarding childbirth and the period immediately afterwards. But there is a difference of kind, rather than degree, between a parent's duty to a newborn and to a 17-year-old preparing for A-level media studies. It debases the language of rights to suggest that anyone has a right to time off work to help a swotting teenager.
John Wright, the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, was, of course, right to warn that `the reality in a business is that the employees need to be at work to enable the firm to make money, pay their wages and grow to employ others'. Yet it is alarming that the point has to be spelt out at all — a measure of how far Britain is drifting towards a Continental culture where employees' social rights' trump all else. Mr Brown, supposedly a believer in Atlanticist free enterprise, must be explicit about whether he wants this drift to continue.
Another unsettling thread weaving its way through the package of measures is the proposed deployment of new agencies and quangos: the Care Quality Commission to oversee failing hospitals; the Homes and Communities Agency to supervise council housing, brownfield development; and the Independent Infrastructure Project Commission to take major planning decisions. These and other quangos are at the very heart of this Queen's Speech. Mr Brown speaks often of decentralisation and the 'personalisation' of public services. But his centraliser's instinct is still with the gentleman in Whitehall and Nye Bevan hearing the clatter of every bedpan.
The bitterness of the exchange between Mr Brown and David Cameron that followed Her Majesty's address was a more accurate guide than the speech itself to the complexion of politics in the months ahead. For all the pieties about ending 'Punch and Judy politics', it is clear that this is precisely what we are in for between now and the election. On Tuesday, the Tory leader was beating the Prime Minister with Punch's stick, all but shouting: 'That's the way to do it!' Mr Brown will say that Mr Cameron has no substance — although that has not stopped him from pilfering Tory proposals, such as inheritance tax cuts, when they have played well in the polls. Mr Cameron will say that the PM is not as strong as Tony Blair, that he is a shameless thief of Tory ideas and that his sole purpose is to cling on to power.
Rarely has politics been so brutal or so personal. The account on p. 12 by our Tory mole, Tamzin Lightwater, of the two men's conversation before the speech rings true. There is every sign that politics between now and polling day will be a cage-fight rather than a philosophical debate. That, in truth, is the predictable consequence of a mostly piecemeal, opportunist programme of measures that is less than the sum of its parts.
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