Editorial: it’s time to do the right thing

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We start from where we are. Events could have taken a dramatically different turn before Gordon Brown’s confessorial resurrection before the court of the Parliamentary Labour Party. But the time for further speculation is over. There are now only imperatives – to hold Mr Brown to his word, to ensure a cathartic tipping point is built on in terms of policy and, in examining the reality check that was the delivery of the nation’s view of this Government, realise that despair is not the tool with which the tide of conservatism and extremism is to be reversed.

In a surreal moment, Mr Brown was greeted by his MPs in that overcrowded committee room as though he had just led Labour to a great victory rather than one of the worst electoral drubbings in its history. It was a reflection of how detached the political world has become from the real of job losses, home repossessions and growing poverty. But it was also a recognition of a political reality that has, albeit haphazardly, delivered the only feasibly workable outcome.

If he is to be taken at his word – and a leopard can change its spots – we have, in the most important sense, a new Prime Minister. One who is chastened, but not cowed, who recognises the need to take Parliament and his party more seriously and the need to be more decisive on policies which must be reshaped and re-invented.

There is a new Cabinet, of sorts. Not the most intellectually edifying in Labour’s history, but immeasurably improved by the absence of those who flounced out of government in ways which exposed their self-indulgent pettiness. If some Machiavellian mind had hatched a plot to rid the ministerial ranks of some of their most poisonously anti-Labour figures, they could not have dreamed of such success. Against that, the inexorable rise of Peter Mandelson and the risible, insulting appointment of sexist bully Alan Sugar bode ill for any optimism that this may genuinely mark a fresh start.

But that is what it must be, with no time to lose. We need no long soul-searching for the bold policy shift the nation wants to see as a defining image of the Government. The Royal Mail privatisation plan must be ditched, along with the third runway at Heathrow and national identity cards; Trident should be scrapped as part of Britain’s contribution to nuclear disarmament; a commitment to reduce primary school class sizes, coupled with a huge extension in social house building, will have a powerful resonance among those who have turned away from Labour, as would the abolition of NHS waiting lists and health inequalities; getting a throttling grip on the banks instead of mewing at them quietly to do the right thing and the abolition of tax havens would signify that Mr Brown and his Government had rediscovered Labour’s moral compass.

These are some of the right policies that need to be pursued in the short time available if Mr Brown is to abide by his word. It is a big job, but it is time to do the right thing. If he does, there is no reason why every MP and Labour member should not put their shoulder to the wheel in support.