Guardian Utd (Monday): PM-in-waiting plans to revitalise Labour

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Monday May 9

PM-in-waiting plans to revitalise Labour
If Blair stepped down quickly, how much would change with Brown in charge?
By Larry Elliott and Ewen MacAskill

From the moment it was clear the opinion polls were accurate and Labour was on course for a third election victory, the political class shifted to the real issue: when will Gordon Brown succeed Tony Blair as prime minister?

Labour's majority was ambiguous: not small enough to force Mr Blair to go soon but not big enough to provide him with the kind of endorsement needed to see him through to the end of a third term.

Mr Brown has certainly waited long enough to fulfil his ambition and has served the longest apprenticeship as chancellor of any occupant of 11 Downing Street for more than a century. The question now is not whether Mr Blair will hand over amicably to his fellow new boy in the Westminster class of 1983, but when. Equally inevitably, attention will turn to what sort of prime minister Mr Brown will make. Will he shift the emphasis from the centre to the centre left, governing from a more traditional Labour stance?

Mr Brown sees his first big task as political renewal. For all the devoted support for the prime minister over Iraq during the campaign, the chancellor privately believes the way Britain went to war was a disaster for Labour, sapping its political legitimacy and diverting attention from what was supposed to be the big issue of the past four years - investment in a rejuvenated public sector.

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[Djinn]

1. for me the UK Labour Party died with John Smith

now they're the same as the ALP here and the Dem's in the US just another bunch of corporate whores with policies almost indistinguishable from the conservatives.