Brown faces greatest challenge

This election was about choosing two leaders: one for today and the other for later. The image of the campaign that will make it to the history books wasn't of Michael Howard, Charles Kennedy or even Tony Blair. It was of Blair and Gordon Brown, shoulder to shoulder, king and heir, together at last.

Of the rancour that is supposed to have divided them, there wasn't a sign. Of Alan Milburn, one-time pretender in waiting, there wasn't a trace. Philip Gould's focus groups determined this was about two men suspending their rivalry, putting all the chat about their separate camps and agendas behind them, and behaving as they did way back when, before one of them had to stand back.

It's what the public wanted: solidity versus artifice; conviction versus Connaught Square; believable against disbelieved. After last night, though, must come the reckoning. There's no going back again. This wasn't a pact sealed in the private gloom of an Islington restaurant, to be reneged on, or not, later; it was declared and reinforced over and over in the undeniable glare of publicity. Indeed, it was so open as to be impossible at times to tell which was the more senior. From the early hours of today, it really is no longer if but when for Brown.

But as the Brownites queue up to crown their now permanently smiling and far, far stronger champion - and as the Blairites grudgingly acknowledge his rightful passage at last - what is it they're anointing? Everyone agrees this is a different Brown. He's less brooding, less menacing than of old. Cheerier, softer and rounder. Fatherhood has humanised him. When Blair talked of children and their education Brown could only nod.

Now, he and Sarah have a child younger than the Blairs'. Suddenly, he's the one speaking from the heart for the future, for years hence, not for today.

He's also, unlike Blair and several of his Cabinet colleagues, not careworn. Last night, in his constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, he wasn't forced to share a stage with the father of a soldier killed in Iraq. Arguably, the defining moment of the election was Brown defending the Government on Iraq, saying he would have done the same had he been Prime Minister. Would he? The truth is, we will never know. Blair is responsible for taking us to war, for claiming Saddam had WMD when he did not - not his Chancellor. It's Blair, not Brown, who shook President Bush's hand.

Being Prime Minister, though, is about much more than managing an illconceived foreign policy, as Blair himself has repeatedly been reminding us. It's about education, immigration, health and crime. Here as well, Brown has been fortunate. If schools serve lousy meals, if the streets are over-run with bogus asylum seekers, if hospitals are plagued by MRSA and if prisons are fit to bursting, none of the blame is laid at the Treasury's door.

BROWN oversees a department that over the last eight years has become more and more like a know-all management consultancy than sleevesrolledup-get-stuck-in. Even if the issue is about cost, as it was on school dinners, it's the hapless Education Secretary who takes the rap, not the man who denied her the money in the first place.

Brown's enjoyment of power without responsibility has even extended to the one area that historically was in his care, the economy. On taking charge, in 1997, Brown's first act was to pass control of the economic levers elsewhere, to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. So, he hasn't had the burden of tempering interest rates and inflation to bear. He's been quick to take the credit, however, as the economy has remained stable - although without expressing gratitude to his Tory predecessor for leaving him with a decent inheritance, and without too much recognition that world markets have stayed calm.

What he has done is to govern public spending and taxation. But his inability to keep the former in check, and his constant tinkering with the latter, do not augur well for a Brown-led administration. He has displayed as much deliberate obfuscation over his own, direct, remit as Blair has exhibited on whole sections of rule.

Similarly, Brown's vision is clearly worded - but no less vague in its practical application. He has defined a third Labour term, increasingly likely to be one that embraces his first as Prime Minister, as being about achieving "a long-term progressive consensus - for full employment, world-class public services, tackling child and pensioner poverty, and building a fairer Britain."

Noble ideals all, and easy to trot off the tongue, and ambitious and difficult to obtain in reality. That's the point about the present Brown. He can talk the talk but, unlike Blair, he hasn't had to walk the walk.

So far, Brown's beliefs have been expressed in increased tax credits for the less welloff and stealth taxes for the rest. To secure his progressive goal he is going to have to be more bold and imaginative than that.

Very soon, the comfortable but secondary role in the passenger seat will end and the driver's chair will be his. Last night, the enemies were silenced. His lieutenants, led by the new generation of Douglas Alexander and Ed Balls, are in the ascendancy. All he has to do now is bide his time. It won't be long. For Brown, the long wait is almost over.