The one certainty of a Gordon Brown premiership is that we will have lots of talk about the constitution and the way we are governed. This is about the only issue on which he has been firm during his non-campaign. It looks the perfect costless option for him, with plenty of potential political gains and very limited calls on the Treasury. Yet there are also big risks of raising expectations.

Mr Brown believes that many of Labour’s current problems derive from a loss of trust in the Government and in politicians generally, everything summarised glibly by the terms spin and sleaze. Some of that is associated with Tony Blair personally because of Iraq. Mr Brown naturally wants to highlight a change in style: to signal that a new proprietor is in charge.

The emphasis will be on reasserting the role of the Civil Service: for instance, the special 1997 order in council allowing special advisers, now just Jonathan Powell, to give orders to officials will be scrapped, although this will mean little in practice. There will be talk of restoring Cabinet government, even though the appointment of Jeremy Heywood as domestic policy adviser and strategist looks like a step towards creating a prime minister’s department in all but name.

Mr Brown has talked of building “a shared national consensus for a programme of constitutional reform”. That has already fuelled an eager debate in the reform lobby. His remarks have been seen, mistakenly, as support for a written constitution. But he has been more cautious, referring just to a “better constitution”. This is a fraught area. It is all very well to have concordats or understandings about the roles of central and local government, and the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen. But how far should, and will, the courts be involved? And what does that mean for parliamentary sovereignty?

Mr Brown favours a wide public debate. Absolutely right. He is a fan of citizen’s juries and similar deliberative tools. But will he go down the route of a popular assembly or convention to write a new constitution? There is a big difference between public consultation and direct democracy. Electronic petitions and web discussions are an important means of strengthening the representative system but are not a substitute for it.

Parliament should remain at the centre of reforms. There is no shortage of ideas, from think-tanks, from Kenneth Clarke’s task force and, this morning, in a persuasive report from the cross-party Modernisation Committee, chaired by Jack Straw. Its main proposals would allow more up-to-date questions and debates: for instance, the last 10 to 15 minutes of departmental question times would be for open, topical questions, and there would be a new weekly 90-minute debate in prime time on a big issue of the day. These proposals could help to make the Commons more central to media and political discussion.

There is plenty to do, leaving aside Lords reform, party funding etc. But Mr Brown and his new Leader of the Commons need, above all, to be clear on what they are trying to do, and how. “May a thousand flowers bloom” may sound like a good theme for a prime minister eager to appear new, but next comes disappointment and charges of betrayal.

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