Blair and Brown

Three points stand out for me in the heaps of print sludge over the past few days.

1. On Blair's economic record, Roger Bootle points out that Blair wanted to take the UK into the euro. This would have given us inappropriate interest rates and probably seesawing property prices. "So the very thing which, if he had achieved it, Tony Blair might well have trumpeted as his greatest triumph, would in fact have been a disaster."

2. Of all people, Rory Bremner puts his finger on a key moment. He records that Peter Hennessy was involved in secret training sessions with Labour figures and civil servants before the 1997 election.

With some honourable ... exceptions, he found them to be uninterested in how government worked, addicted to mobile phones and special advisers, with an attitude to the machinery of government that combined arrogance with a belief in the Yes, Minister caricature of Civil Service mandarins as pompous, obstructive and deeply conservative. Even now, I wonder if it's the Home Office that's not fit for purpose or merely Labour's management skills.

Why am I not surprised?

They never did the solid work, and Stalin Macavity Brown believed he could crack it with imposed central targets. Easy really - makes you wonder why no one thought of it before.

3. How likely is it that Gordon Brown will replace spin with humble government? Patience Wheatcroft wittily points out that he has a track record as evidence - a track record of meddlesome government, spin and repeated announcements.