Cash questions for Brown's Labour party
If Gordon Brown is still fighting Tony Blair (Martin Kettle, November 24) then so is the Labour party. The party enabled Blair's removal from office; the collective mindset against New Labour and Blairism willed it. But the battleground was and is not clear. There cannot possibly be a victory over Blairism while Brown and Labour are still bound by an "unremittingly" New Labour manifesto. Until they seek a fresh mandate they remain only as a caretaker administration.
And in the meantime, if the Tories - in their key domestic policies - become even more Blairite than Labour then Brown and Labour are faced with a fight that is almost impossible to win. Martin Kettle is right: Brown "must tell us what he's all about". More importantly, though, Labour must also find a way of working out what it really believes in