Governments recycle policies, pledges and promises. Gordon Brown has decided to recycle his rhetoric as well-with some fine-sounding phrases about what he owed his father, a minister of the Church of Scotland. Tony Blair in his time talked about the ‘giving age’ to the Labour conference. The Brown version recalled a lesson learnt at his father’s knee-that it was more blessed to give than to receive: the object of the giving being-in this case-‘society’.
It’s now some months since the prime minister started to share his thoughts with us about his own special status as one of the ‘sons of the manse’-a grouping typified supposedly by industrious virtue and devotion to the common good, whose classlessness results from rubbing shoulders with all kinds of people in church, and whose respect for learning results in relentlessly impressive self-improvement.
As one of these characters myself I suppose I should be flattered by such rave reviews.
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