Anyone hoping for a new Gordon Brown after his return from the political dead will have already been disappointed. With another failed Blairite coup behind him, a relieved-looking prime minister was yesterday back doing what he likes best: unveiling initiatives, announcing relaunches and offering stern-faced pledges of a new humility. In the wake of the expenses scandal and Labour's worst election results for a century, this was the fruit of the cabinet's agonising over democratic reform.
But in spite of a handful of welcome proposals for cleaning up parliament and a limited new right of voter recall for miscreant MPs, it will do little to meet the expectations of those who believe constitutional change is the answer to public contempt for the political elite. Plans to elect most or all members of the House of Lords, which Brown could have driven through when he came to office, now seem likely to be emasculated or buried by a Tory government. The call for yet another public debate about electoral reform, more than a decade after New Labour first promised one, simply looks like going through the motions.
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