The occasion of Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister has been used by numerous commentators, either at home or abroad in order for some to praise Tony Blair’s legacy and for others in order to minimise it.

The former were unfortunately I may add more vocal than the later. Abroad things are even worse. Some continental medias are openly using the opportunity to brags about ‘Britain’s longest period of economic growth’, by at the same time highlighting ‘the corrections made to the damages caused by Thatcherism’.

Yet the real picture has numerous differences, with the one pictured by these commentators. If Britain was able to record its longest period of economic growth, it is mainly thanks to the reforms made by Margaret Thatcher and, by the often forgotten John Major. While it is fair to say that some mistakes were made during Thatcher’s years, Britain’s industries were already in decline by 1979 courtesy of Labour support to Arthur Scargill and, after ten years in power, the legacy of the Labour Party on social matters is nonexistent to say the least. True ‘billions were invested in order to catch up with other nations’ as people like Anthony Giddens like to say in the French newspaper Le Figaro. Yet the education system is falling apart, the NHS is even more bureaucratic than before and, Britain’s transport system is unable to meet the need of the future decades.

More than the failure of Blair’s legacy this also highlights another failure, the utter failure of the ‘Third Way model’ in Britain.

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Or not, as the case may be. Does anyone honestly believe that there will be any change beyond presentational purposes that will separate Gordon Brown from Tony Blair?

Gordon Brown has played an enormous role in the running of this country for the past decade. He has been responsible for Britain’s economic problems, the disguising of real inflation, the raiding of the pension’s pot, the massive increases in taxation and wasted Government spending and the selling off of our gold supply for an extremely poor return. He has had an equal hand in it all.

I’m watching the BBC News 24 coverage of Tony Blair’s leaving office as I write this. As per usual, the institutionally leftist BBC journalists are discussing Blair’s Iraq legacy. We know by now that the British people’s number one political priority has never been Iraq, but in recent times, immigration – but, of course, the biased Beeb haven’t mentioned that once, because they do not speak for the people, but themselves.

Now, Blair is yesterday’s news, and those journalists who were welcoming him into Downing Street so warmly and with so much celebration only ten short years ago are now hounding him out of office, taking every opportunity to run him into the ground. Not that Blair does not deserve much of the abuse for what he has done to this country, but there is no greater hypocrisy than has been engaged in by many of these smirking journalists. So many of them have a spring in their step, a quiet smile on their faces – and yet they have spent the past years willingly aiding Blair in his deception of the British people.

Prime Minister’s Question in Parliament looms. Blair is at Parliament now and soon it will be over. Far too late in my opinion. Then I’ll be off to watch Tim Henman beat Lopez in the second round of Wimbledon. A real, decent British man. Come on, Tim!

Our friends, Arleen Ouzounian of Kings College London Conservative Future and Richard Jackson of the University College London Conservative Future have tagged us with the ‘It’s Got To Be Brown’ meme.

I’ve had a very quick go at filling out the questions, though unsurprisingly, I am not expecting Gordon Brown to undertake any of the latter six points any time in the near future - and if he did, I would probably go into shock.

2 things Gordon Brown should be proud of:

• Not losing his hair.
• There really isn’t anything else is there..?

2 things he should apologise for:

• Raiding the pensions pot and leaving many OAPs in effective poverty.
• The massive and unsubstantiated increases in taxation, crime and immigration.

2 things that he should do immediately when he becomes PM:

• Request that Her Majesty dissolve Parliament and initiate a general election.
• Resign.

2 things he should do while he is PM:

• Take Britain out of the European Union immediately.
• Recall all British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only one week until Gordon Brown becomes our next Prime Minister. I can’t wait… not.

For Britain (and in contrast to the Orange slogan,) the Future’s Bleak, the Future’s Brown. Blair left this country a legacy alright, but it was certainly not a pleasant or favourable one.

While Gordon Brown will want to give the appearance he has made a clean break with the past and Tony Blair, I fear much of what his government will pursue will be along much the same lines. This has most prominently manifested itself in Mr Brown’s pledge to introduce a package of constitutional change. I’m not sure I like the sound of that, especially if it’s anything even vaguely similar to the previous attempts at meddling Labour have partaken in – which I suspect it is.

Labour’s highly contentious devolution of Scotland and Wales began the now irreversible break up of the Union, which Gordon Brown now rather curiously (and hypocritically) claims to somehow be in favour of protecting. The House of Lords and hereditary peers worked well, and yet Labour entered government and engaged in constitutional vandalism without any clear idea of an end outcome – effectively change for change’s sake. Labour are now going to use their own potentially illegal dealings as an excuse for further reform, and as a measure to head off the Loans-for-Peerages scandal which engulfed Blair’s premiership.

Worse still, perhaps, was that within days of entering office, Labour enacted a law allowing unelected special advisors to give direct orders to civil servants. This lead to a fundamental change in the very nature of the relationship between state and government.

The Chancellor tells us that no challengers were able to run for the leadership because Labour are wholly united in their determination not to return to the past. Does anyone really believe that? In reality, Labour MPs were fearful of a leadership contest that would highlight Labour’s divisions in the eyes of the electorate, and the differences between what they publicly said and privately believed.

I believe that Gordon Brown will be ruthless in any changes he will want to make to this country. Some believe the new Prime Minister will be a relatively easy push-over. I am not so sure.

Yesterday, Warwick and Breckland, the final two councils yet to conclude their counts, returned their results and brought an end to the English local elections.

In total, the Conservative party took 41% of the vote and gained an extra nine hundred and eleven councillors across England, which was substantially more than had been projected. At the same time Labour dropped five hundred and five seats and the Liberal Democrats suffered a humiliating loss of two hundred and forty six seats.

In Bath, the Lib Dems lost three seats overall while the Conservatives gained a total of five. Labour made a net loss of just one and two independents lost their seats. Therefore, the Conservatives are now the largest group on the council, though they do ran in just two seats short of an overall majority and thus Bath & North-East Somerset remains in No Overall Control.

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