From the Guardian (edited):
Gordon Brown unveiled a manifesto entitled Building Britain's Future and a draft Queen's speech containing 12 bills. The overall aim was to downgrade Whitehall public service targets in favour of individual rights, with some enforceable by the community and others by individuals.
There’s a problem in this. People don’t want rights, they want things done. They don’t want to enforce things, they need to happen.
This is the choice agenda.
And people don’t actually want choice in most things the state does fro them, they just want things done well.
Why can’t he get that?
He can’t get it because he is in thrall to Maragaret Thatcher’s agenda. Labour are doomed as long as they continue to accept the Conservative Party’s agenda. The Conservatives are just better at being Tories, of necessity!
I see this as having less to do with the Thatcherite choice agenda, and more in common with John Major’s “Citizen’s Charter” initiatives towards the end of his premiership. Why do sinking governments indulge in this kind of pointless rearranging of the deckchairs?