One lesson our current Prime minister has not learnt, despite the machinations that have wreaked havoc over his year in office, was to lay the soul of New Labour to rest and divorce himself completely from the false dawn that was the rise and fall of 'Blairism'.

It would be far better that he renounce the economic boom for what it was – a period of credit-enriched spending fuelled by the folly of his ingenious plot to exorcise the hydra of inflation by giving the Bank of England its independence.

He was wrong to make such an assumption and to spend, spend, spend on the strength of it, ignoring the onward march of globalised recession following the American financial catastrophe.

Has he never heard the phrase 'when America sneezes, we catch the cold'?

New Labour was born out of an overwhelming desire to follow Baroness Thatcher's mantra and kill socialism for ever.

Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, bewitched and at times bothered him by following her stance, even at the expense of reinventing the beer-and-sandwiches mentality of talking to union bosses over policy matters by replacing it with the 2004 Warwick Agreement.

The results are now painfully obvious. Next month will see the opening of the Labour Party conference at a time when grass-roots membership is in cataclysmic decline.

Mr Brown faces his first conference speech as leader and, to top that, must oversee a by-election in Scotland caused by the death of his close friend John McDougall, formerly MP for Glenrothes.

This Government needs to recognise that socialism, equality and diversity are parts of the same package.

Mr Brown needs to stand up for the principles of socialism, reclaim it as his raison d'etre and fight those who would see him cast aside for the Blairite David Miliband.

If Mr Brown cannot return to his faith in socialism, a period in opposition would seem inevitable.

Coun George Waddle,
Fellgate and Hedworth ward.