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Over at the Spectator Coffee House blog Fraser Nelson has some typically cogent observations on Brown’s likely future course. Perhaps most interesting, however, are his thoughts on the Parliamentary Labour Party. He argues that ‘the Blairites have lost the argument with the party’, with the result that ‘we can now see orphaned Blairites and a resurgent Old Labour arguing over future direction.’
If the old Labour guard truly is in the ascendancy, then the key question surely is whether Brown has the ability – or indeed the inclination – to re-assert the importance of Blairite market reforms? Given his own proclivity for centralizing, as well as his embattled position this seems highly doubtful: but does this represent the death-knell of the New Labour project? Or merely a dormant phase prior to a re-awakening under a ‘post-Blairite’ (read Miliband) leadership?
