Thanks to Rachel Sylvester over at Three Line Whip, Tim Montgomerie’s tortoise-and-the-hare analogy has now been mapped onto the Labour Party. Sylvester characterises the Blairite reformers as “hares”, whilst those who stand in the way of reform are “tortoises”. On this account, she argues, Brown is increasingly acting like a hare: “Now, there are increasing signs that the Prime Minister is turning from tortoise to hare. David Freud has been appointed to implement welfare reforms that Mr Brown tried to block (or at least delay) when he was Chancellor. This former banker is a hare on speed – he wants to hand large sections of the benefits system over to the private sector and get tough on those claiming incapacity benefit and lone parents. He is convinced that the Prime Minister is now fully on board with the plan – even though he admitted to Alice Thomson and me last week that he had a fight to get it past the Treasury last year.
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