Alan Watkins: So we turn to Mr Brown's Last Phase

The Prime Minister who foolishly tried to out-Blair his predecessor is now reaching the end of the road

Old-fashioned biographies of great men used to come out in three volumes. If the fashion were to be revived, which seems unlikely, the first book would be entitled Gordon Brown: The Years of Promise, and would cover the years up to 1997. The second book would be subtitled The Years of Fame, and would take us up to the great non-election of 2007. We are now coming to the end of the last book. It would be called The Last Phase.

Oddly enough, Mr Brown would be a better Prime Minister today if he had made various changes when he first took office. Instead, he tried to out-Blair Mr Tony Blair.

Does anyone remember the "government of all the talents"? Where are they now? Some, a very few, have settled down as middle-ranking ministers, hardly distinguishable from those who have served their time in the Old Labour hulks.

Others left the Government with varying degrees of pique, disillusion or disgrace. With others, again, it was never wholly clear (not least to Mr Brown's spokespeople at No 10) whether they had been members of the administration in the first place.

And "British jobs for British workers". Does anyone remember them? It was a slogan lifted from the British National Party, without acknowledgement or apology by Mr Brown, and heard by the Labour conference with polite applause.

Then there was the great identity card marathon. It has been going on since Mr David Blunkett was at the Home Office. Successive home secretaries, supported first by Mr Blair and then Mr Brown, assured us that this new means of identification would protect us from international terrorism, money-laundering, paedophilia and, no doubt, swine fever. Commercial organisations were engaged at huge expense to print cards; money straight down the drain.

Along comes Mr Alan Johnson, the new Home Secretary, to tell us that identity cards were not such a good idea after all – that (to echo a judgment of the late Lord Goddard, the former Lord Chief Justice) Britons never will be slaves.

Instead of which, as far as I can see, Mr Johnson proposes to make a card necessary when someone is applying or reapplying for a passport next year. It is not much of a concession, I grant you. But it is something all the same.

We now come to the 42-day detention period. The Government has been engaged in a game of legislative tennis, patting the ball backwards and forwards, for almost as long as ministers have been exercised by identity cards. The Government could have settled, years ago, for a 28-day period. Instead, the whole question was contaminated by prime ministerial pride. "They shall not pass": that was Mr Brown's slogan, which he had inherited from Mr Blair.

Even when the Government is trying to do something sensible, it is defeated. Certainly the legislation about expenses has been rushed. Some of it has been badly thought out. Last week the Government was defeated by three votes, and Mr Jack Straw accepted the defeat. The House decided that the courts could not hear evidence on what are called "Proceedings in the House".

The truth is that the House has been over-protective of its privileges. The privilege of freedom of speech means that no member can be sued for defamation because of something

he or she said in the chamber. It does not, or should not, mean that what goes on in Parliament is outside the law. Her Majesty's judges have, over the years, proved themselves remarkably timid in accepting what the limits of the court's powers should be.

The Government turns up to put matters on a more sensible footing, the initiative being taken by the Government, not by the courts. And the House says no. It would serve as an illustration of what has brought about the scandal to begin with.

At least Lord Mandelson had nothing to do with that particular defeat of the Government. At any rate, I do not think so. As I wrote at the very end of the last column, once a politician acquires a reputation for fiendish ingenuity, it is very difficult for him to lose it. This has been so ever since the return to these shores of Mr Peter Mandelson, as he still was in those days.

His first triumph, or apparent triumph, was the embarrassment of Mr George Osborne. Indeed, it was touch and go whether Mr Osborne would survive as shadow Chancellor. It required devoted attention on the part of the Tory medical staff to see him through.

All the poor chap had done was to relay some disobliging remarks which Lord Mandelson had originally made about Mr Brown. And yet, Lord Mandelson was being depicted as the hero, Mr Osborne as the man with the dagger. Truly, the other man's cunning knew no bounds.

Since then, Lord Mandelson's reputation has not exactly increased but remained on a level. It is difficult to see precisely why.

It is said that it was he who first suggested that Lord Hutton should undertake the inquiry into the BBC and the Iraq war. He knew about Lord Hutton because of his experiences in Northern Ireland.

He thought he was a sensible sort of person. He told Lord Falconer, who told Mr Blair, or it may have been the other way about. Who can tell? Who indeed!

At all events, Lord Hutton's inquiry was conducted very much in public. Lord Mandelson, to protect Mr Blair (and maybe for other reasons), wanted the inquiry to be in private. There was an angry mob of the great and the good, and of rebellious backbenchers. And Lord Mandelson had to withdraw quietly. Or so the story goes.

It was the second group, the backbenchers, that brought about the abandonment of the part-privatisation of the Royal Mail. The defence has been erected that the policy has been reversed because of the change in the financial and commercial climate. But the rehabilitation of Lord Mandelson coincided with – and perhaps followed – the economic crisis.

The reasoning behind the projected change (rejected even by Margaret Thatcher) seemed to be that trouble created opportunity, a fallacious idea at the best of times.

Another notion that was rejected by Mrs Thatcher was that of rail privatisation. That was put into practice by John Major or, rather, by a succession of luckless ministers. This was combined with the Private Finance Initiative pioneered by Mr Brown and his officials in the Treasury.

This was all right as long as the money kept flowing in. Or, rather, it was not entirely right because the risk was with the Government while the company took the profits. Last week Lord Adonis (an original unreconstructed Blairite) pulled the plug.

Mr Brown is left contemplating his work in Gordon Brown: The Years of Fame. The only slogan he has left in the locker is that the Tories are the party of unemployment. But unemployment is going up by the month. Surely Mr Brown can think of something better? As it is, we are left with the closing pages of The Last Phase.