The Spectator’s Notes | 29 September 2007

Its delivery was dull, but don’t puritanically fool yourself that the matter was better than the manner. It offered no new idea and made no attempt to reason with the audience about any of the phenomena in the modern world which might worry us. What is the nature of international Islamist terrorism? What is our foreign policy and what part are our troops playing in it? Why did we have an apparently sudden banking crisis last week? Mr Brown explained nothing about any of these things. Instead, he produced boilerplate faux-conservative phraseology about ‘our island’s story’ and ‘tough new powers’ against crime. He hymned the NHS for having had a 50 per cent success rate in saving his eyes. In a deliberate echo of Mrs Thatcher’s speeches about her father’s moral influence on her, he praised his father’s on him. He also, as she did, referred approvingly to the Parable of the Talents.