Labour's PBR council gains

It is often fascinating to compare the Westminster media bubble view with the public reaction to events like the PBR. So, Luke's set of last night's council by-election results, including big swings to Labour in several marginals, is well worth a read. They add to the picture from most recent polls of a swing away from the Tories, which George Osborne's shrill response to the PBR won't have helped. Highlights include three Labour gains, in Dorset, Nuneaton and Hampshire, and big swings to Labour in the Hastings and Rye and Westminster North parliamentary marginals.

Budget balance

Doubtless there will be plenty of grumbles about today's pre-budget report in the days ahead. Some will say that the cuts should be deeper - though a 0.8% increase a year for two years is pretty deep, especially once the welfare budget is considered - while there will be complaints about the national insurance rise. But the real problem for the Tories is that the more they rant, the less they tell us about what they would really do instead. I've just been watching shadow chief secretary Philip Hammond on Sky News who had nothing but rhetoric to contribute to the debate. Indeed, what impressed most about the PBR speech was the unflashy authority of Alastair Darling, whose stature has grown greatly in the financial crisis, which compared starkly what the shrill response of George Osborne, who has experienced a big dip in his reputation by calling it wrong last year. The idea that Osborne could be allowed to let his economic ignorance loose on the economy in six months time is something that really ought to worry the markets.

That vision thing (2)

Yesterday's pre-budget report and CSR announcement were necessary and good politics. Being accused of being a magpie and stealing Tory clothes is not a charge to keep the PM or the Chancellor up at night. (Nor is David Cameron's accusation at PMQs today that Gordon Brown 'looks phoney': the colour scheme for pots and kettles springs to mind.) In education, there is more money for primary school building and a new raft of targets which require minimum achievements in both English and Maths at each stage. So far, so sensible. But, Gordon should study two comment pieces in this morning's papers. Jonathan Freedland sets Brown his main task in the months ahead.

From now on, the Brown administration needs to do less politics and more governing....One minister tells friends that the trouble with the Brown team is that they are obsessed with politics, never able to resist a neat manoeuvre here, a little jab there. The PM needs to prove them wrong, getting on with the quiet, steady business of running the country well.....A year from now and we shall be in the run-up to the 2009 election. He has 12 months in which to think and act big, not play catch-up with the Conservative party. This was the Gordon Brown we waited for. Now we want to see him.

And, although it may be a little tongue in cheek given its source, Danny Finkelstein makes a good point about the Year Zero tendencies of some Brownites. The public think of 1997 as when the new Labour government was elected, not 2007. Ministers need to remind people of what has been achieved and learned, and build on those achievements and lessons, as well as promoting new ideas and borrowing from the Tories.