Brown Premiership - what exactly?

If Brown ascends to the Premiership and moves his house to Number 10, what exactly will change?

After all, both Brown and Blair were the prime architects of New Labour and Brown has publicly supported Blair on many of the big decisions / issues.

Just curious whether anyone has an opinion.

Cheers

I guess the most obvious thing will be emphasis rather than direction.

A little less of the 'tory-Blair' and a little more of the 'redistributive Brown'.
We shall have to await the details, sadly.
Unfortunately no-one can say much more although I expect the budget next march (GB's last remember) to provide some pointed and interesting clues
(and Cameron's response is going to be pretty important for him too).

My bet is it will go down very well with the voters.
A little more of the traditional Labour (even if it isn't a massive move left-wards - and it won't be - as you rightly say GB is co-author of the 'New Labour Project') seems to accord more with the public mood.

That and Gordon Brown being a far less media & PR orientated politician who will turn out to be IMO, for want of a better term, a 'less flashy' PM.

As I've been saying for a while now, we have, or will have had when TB goes, just about 10yrs of 'young', 'the future' and all those other rather tedious marketing slogans to try and convey dynamism.
I'm not so sure the (aging) nation isn't going to be very happy with 'substance', 'safe', 'sober', 'experienced', 'measured' and all those other terms that convey maturity and an excellent track record.

Brown's period as chancellor during some of the best economic years Britain has seen since records began is not to be dismissed lightly - and my bet is the public will not dismiss that lightly when the chance to comment arises.

This record will also sit in stark contrast to vacuous 'PR' Cameron and the record of his 'return of the living dead' front bench (many of whom aren't quite 'new' or 'the future' at all and will remind all that care to look of a past even many tories would rather forget!).

It remains to be seen but I think the switch to GB will be much more in alignment with the nation's majority view and a move to a Tony Blair-lite candidate as we see in Cameron (for instance) will turn out to be a wrong-footed attempt at fighting the last war, if you see what I mean.

I suppose it should also be borne in mind that it has been the case in the past that when people expected little change when a party leadership (which involved at some point becoming new PM) changed that that has often been shown to be wrong as the new leadership style developed.

For instance in our more recent political past Mrs Thatcher turned out to be a radical tory leader when many thought she would be 'contained' if not outright controlled by her tory front bench colleagues
(although those that are aware of Joseph, Howe, Neve et al who actually concocted 'Thatcherism' would see the tory take-over from the old patrician tories was planned long before her in the mid to late 1960's on) .
Similarly Jim Callaghan turned out to be an engaging and at times very popular leader when many had previously thought him rather faceless and colourless.

We can shoot the breeze about it all we like and even cite examples or comments and think we know what might be likely but of course we can never really know; plenty of surprises ahead and I'm sure GB will spring his fair share of them too.


[edit on 17-9-2006 by sminkeypinkey]