"New Labour has just nicked all the Tory rhetoric. The policies haven't changed. Gordon Brown is running out of people to tax."

"The Tories have spent the last fifteen years moaning that New Labour has stolen all its policies. This isn't true. New Labour has just nicked all the Tory rhetoric. The policies haven't changed. Gordon Brown is running out of people to tax."

That's from a rather excellent review of Gordon Brown's book "Moving Britain Forward: Selected Speeches 1997-2006". The review is by Dominic Hilton and can be found here on the Social Affairs Unit web site.

Here are a few more extracts from the review:

"Close your eyes and picture an overall-clad Gordon Brown driving a forklift truck into your hallway and removing your assets. Now there's no need for you to read this book."

"To my aching mind, the defining feature of the New Labour governments has been their endlessly repeated insistence that they, and only they, can clear up the messes that they have made. Every fucked-up initiative has been quickly followed by the launch of another fucked-up initiative to resolve the previous fuck-up. The intended result has been an incremental creep of the state. And the state is chockfull of creeps."

"Moving Britain Forward is littered with glimpses of New Labour balls. There is nothing that Gordon Brown will not readily co-opt and pass off as his own thinking. If you took Brown at his word, you'd think he invented flexible economies, mobile capital and competition between suppliers, and was the first to dare question the proper role of the state (after which he naturally draws the wrong conclusion). The Tories have spent the last fifteen years moaning that New Labour has stolen all its policies. This isn't true. New Labour has just nicked all the Tory rhetoric. The policies haven't changed. Gordon Brown is running out of people to tax."

"Even when a policy has been shown to be a colossal cock-up, Brown says we must:

not allow setbacks to discourage us [but] strive even harder - our determination not diminished but intensified.

If the leeches didn't work last time, we'll just up the dosage of leeches."

Do read the whole review for a fuller flavour of the fool in Number 10.