The week ahead

This week we will finally get a chance to see this great "vision" of Gordon Brown's in the Queen's speech . To be honest, and desperately trying not to be cynical, I cannot see where there will be any difference from Blair's last speech, last year. Most of the policy content will be the same, a lot of any financial annoucements have already been made, and there won't be any new money, and any "new" ideas will be ones pinched from the tories.

We will hear yet again an announcement about improving education, even though over the last ten years there has been little improvement. There will be another about the an NHS deep clean, and reduction of superbugs, even though numbers are soaring. Immigration will probably get a mention, which will make the debate afterwards interesting, as the Government have not only lost control of our borders but also of the statisticians that provide them with their figures.

So all in all this speech will be amke or break for Brown. If, and this is a big if, he has been keeping things back for this speech we can at last see the "vision". I personally believe that the only vision he has is to try and distance himself from Blair, but by doing that the only success he has had was to destroy a very comfortable poll lead.

Old ideas wil be churned again, old money will be reannounced making it sound like new investment, and the control freakery that is Brown will see even more control of the NHS, and dare I say it, more top down targets.

Brown wanted it to be business as usual, and it is in some respects. After all, there hasn't been any real change at all.