Mandy Manifesto With Dollop Of Brown Sauce

Another day and another relaunch from the crazy world of Gordon Brown and the boys from the New Labour Brand. The public does not want another born again Brown relaunch, it wants a general election. Until that happens, all the political posturing is pointless. Hollow promises and hidden cuts are like water off a duck's back.

The joke dish of the day is the mouth-watering document 'Building Britain's Future' - or 'Building Brown's Future' which has the paw prints of Mandy, aka PM, all over it. A pie-in-the-sky election manifesto served up with a dollop of Brown sauce.

Setting the country on yesterday's road to a new tomorrow, the blueprint for a sharp exit sees the struggling Supreme Leader trying to find a few crumbs of comfort for his legacy and shore up his position ahead of what could be September's leaving party.

But Zombie Brown and the Prince of Darkness can churn out all the eye-catching initiatives they want and dress them up in faded, jaded pink ribbon jargon. In the end it's a coda from the Living Dead.

As the Orange Party has pointed out so many times, the problem for Brown is that he's stuck in the past and the problem for the Labour Party is that they're stuck with him.

So bleary-eyed voters are sent to sleep with another big relaunch and another dishonest damp squib. Today's initiatives tell more about years of failed policies than the shock and awe of an election manifesto to set the country alight.

Trying to breath some life into a corpse, it's a sad admission of 12 years of failure in key public policy areas of health, housing and education and an indictment of a discredited target culture at the root of many of the ills.

Stand by for some shockers. After over a decade in power, the government is now promising a 14 day turnaround to see a cancer specialist which should happen anyway to nip it in the bud. After years of suffering an education fiasco, parents will now get help for kids over basic numeracy and literacy skills which should be a basic cornerstone of any education policy.

And local residents are promised housing priority in a 'British homes for British residents' ploy to try to win over core voters coupled with building more 'social' homes, when everyone regardless of citizenship or residency should be entitled to a roof over their head.

The measures are so basic the public can be forgiven for thinking they should be happening anyway. And just how will the government pay for it all?

Add to that silly mix a stark admission that years of a target-based culture has been a dismal failure and at best this is a damn disgrace.

After years of fannying around, the NHS mainstay of centrally-imposed targets is being ditched. A sure sign the target culture which has been defended so robustly and suffocated the country for years was just a deceitful device used as a ministerial cop-out.

Just what has the government been doing with all the cash for all these years?

The public can see through the sham. The country is being saddled with a mountain of debt for generations to come. Something has got to give. Come clean and tell it straight and voters will be eternally grateful.

Instead it's a game of cat and mouse and more smoke and mirrors accounting from a fag-end government which can't bring itself to own up to its past incompetence and monumental mistakes.

And to cap it all Mandelson has finally admitted there'll be no Whitehall comprehensive spending review this side of the election so no one knows what the hell they're doing, voters will be kept in the dark over spending costs and Brown can pile on the lies. What a mess. All dubbed by Cameron as "a relaunch without a spending tag".

Cameron is chipping away at the lies, deceit and dishonesty and every blow is a further nail in the coffin for beleaguered Brown. The latest wheeze revolves around the revolving door of spending money earmarked for the future that the country won't have anyway. Bring it forward, bring it on and hey presto an 'investment' miracle.

Years of power have bred a culture of smug arrogance.

If only the government would own up to the economic mess and pile of debt. Then there would be a stark choice over what to cut and what to keep and more importantly who do you trust most to keep their word.

Those choices depend on a political point of view and make for a healthy political debate which voters would buy into. They pays their money and makes their choice. if only they were given the choice and the chance.

In the dying weeks and months of the government, nothing today will see the light of day before that election. There are no Big Issues like Trident or the vexed Royal Mail sell-off plan. Scaredy-pants. It should be treated with the contempt it deserves - just election propaganda bullshit, selling the electorate short.

The public deserves better. The empty posturing will only end when voters are finally allowed to have their say.

General election dividing lines are being formed. That will probably boil down to who voters trust rather than old tribal loyalties. Honesty versus lies, trust versus deceit. Today a heady mix of fudge, fakery and failure has been thrown into the mix.

Mid picture: Gerald Scarfe, Sunday Times