After a traumatic start, is Brown daring to show greater courage?
A year ago, as the end appeared nigh for Tony Blair, a parlour game became fashionable in the narrow circle of Westminster journalists. Who, they wondered, would be the first columnist to recant his or her hostility to the outgoing leader and beg him to return? It is worth noting that, for all Gordon Brown’s troubles in his first six months in office, nostalgia for the prime minister who oversaw the biggest foreign policy disaster in at least half a century has been largely absent. Blair, quite simply, is not missed. As we wrote in our special issue marking his exit, he brought about many positive changes – not least a consensus on spending for public services and a more socially liberal outlook – but he should have quit in 2003 after his terrible decision to go to war in Iraq. Blair’s refusal to go earlier made the inheritance harder for his successor. It gave the Conservatives more time to build a proper fighting machine, after a decade of weak opposition. And it increased in the min
