Day by day, week by week, the shape of the next election campaign becomes clearer. There is not much "new politics" about. Despite the talk of renewal and doing things differently, politicians operate in a political system and media culture we are pretty much stuck with. More openness about expenses and a more modern set of Commons rules are good things, but they are not a new dawn.
From Labour, we will see less central control, more power to the patient, more choice in education – all phrases we have heard before, all a bid to grasp the new politics. The trouble is, Labour can't let go of the old politics.
There is a new "gang of four" – the key group around Gordon Brown, which these days comprises Peter Mandelson, Shaun Woodward, Ed Balls and Tessa Jowell. They are looking back in particular to the general election of 1992, which Woodward saw from the inside as a Tory. It resonates because it was an election that an unpopular government facing an apparently rejuvenated opposition, led by Neil Kinnock, "should" have lost but actually won.
One of the group says the difference between them and the Blairites who quit the government is the difference between hope and despair. "They think it's all over. We don't." Another lists the similarities between the Brown government and the John Major one 17 years ago – tension between No 10 and the Treasury; predictions of economic disaster; mutinous backbenchers harking back to the glory of Thatcher (for Thatcher, read Blair); dreadful local, European and byelections; and a general sense that the party had run out of ideas. In fact, back in the days of Spitting Image it was worse – the satirical show portrayed Major "pushing a few peas round a plate; at least we don't have that". Steve Bell had him wearing his underpants outside his trousers.
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