[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

country feels better by the time they have to renew their mandate, Mr Cameron and boyish George Osborne,
his chancellor of the exchequer, will raise VAT, a sales tax. Lots of people in Whitehall will be made
redundant.
A more upbeat priority for the new government will be Swedish-style school reform, the most radical and
interesting of its campaign pledges (even if the policy was actually first mooted by Mr Blair). Michael Gove,
the impressive new schools secretary, will introduce legislation to allow charities, groups of parents and others
to set up new secondary schools with state funding. Take-up will be slow to begin with—and there will be
squeals about the diversion of funds from other bits of the education budget—but the Tories will be able to
point to this one positive, potentially transformative achievement amid all the axe-wielding and tax-hiking.
That leaves the issue of Labour’s next leader. Mr Brown’s exit will bring a contest featuring plenty of
unpalatable contenders but no obvious front-runner.
Clement Attlee used a cricketing metaphor to describe the effect of Winston Churchill’s pre-eminence on the
subsequent generation of Tory politicians. “It’s the heavy roller,” Attlee remarked. “Doesn’t let the grass grow
under it.” The heavy rolling by Messrs Blair and Brown, dominant in the Labour Party for 16 years, means that
few of their colleagues have developed independent political identities. One who has, Lord Mandelson, Mr
Brown’s grandiosely titled First Secretary, will be among the kingmakers in the leadership contest.
The winner will be a Miliband: David, the elder of the two brothers and hitherto the foreign secretary; or Ed,
the energy secretary. But, after a humiliating election rout, as factions within the party bicker over its causes
and as recriminations break out, Labour’s crown will seem a shabby one to inherit.
Andrew Miller: political editor, The Economist
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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