What a Balls-up!

The will-he-won't-he election talk has quickly blown over. Certainly, Brown bottled it, or perhaps we should say he 'Ballsed' it up. But in the medium- to long-term the bigger danger is Brown's apparent ability to alienate his own party. Swerving to the right on inheritance tax might play well to middle England, but it's already angered (quite rightly in my opinion) those on the left of the Labour Party (see e.g. Polly Toynbee's splendid comment in the Guardian on Friday). In a similar vein, Brown's conference speech was a mixture of the usual vacuity laced with some nasty, jingoistic rhetoric that's hardly going to play well at the Fabian Society. 'British jobs for British workers'? Is Brown planning on withdrawing from the EU then? Of course, this won't matter much if he is able to deliver electoral or polling success a la Blair. But there are already signs that the Blairites are starting to snipe (Charlie Falconer's comments over the weekend) and the Telegraph poll suggested that while the public still view Brown as the strongest leader, they have doubts about the party as a whole. Unless Brown outlines a clear vision of where he wants to take the party and the country -- and stops nakedly opportunistic policy grabs -- he could be in for a torrid time.