The Sound of Browns

Politics There's something a bit disconcerting about watching someone you went to school with shaking a new prime minster with both hands and having them grinning at each other, but that's exactly what I saw this afternoon on television as Gordon Brown 'stepped' into Bridgewater Hall in Manchester for the special party conference. Tris began his support for the party all of those years ago and there he is now on the front line which sort of makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. After rewatching An Inconvenient Truth again this week I was suddenly determined to join The Green Party.

Perhaps I should.

Anyway, in the ensuing speech Gordon Brown came across as a far better communicator on the range of issues that he'll now have to deal with than I was expecting -- sure the budget speeches indicated he can hit a mark and pitch his words well, but it takes something more to make a room full of people passionate without shouting and that's something her certainly managed. Whether any of the promises made will come to pass and if in fact what'll happen next will be significantly different to the past ten years under Tony Blair remains to be seen. Parts certainly sounded like a refiguring of old policies and issues using more open language.

Brown's appearance on the Newsnight special on Friday night was certainly more telling and filled with the kind of language you'd expect from any politician, however thoughtful. He talked around all kinds of problems, unable to provide a coherent answer when asked about why English kids have to pay tuition fees in parts of the kingdom where their classmates have none. In other interviews he's also failed the address the particularly post devolution rule that Scottish MPs can vote in parliament on English only issues that no longer have anything to do with them, but bristle at the thought of our MPs heading up to Edinburgh and doing the same.

I can see that in some respects, the UK is a better place after ten years of Labour in power. But there are too many anomalies within that for me to actually consider voting for them.

Yet.