Gordon Brown ends this parliamentary term on a high, having seemingly achieved everything he set out to do four weeks ago. He has stood for “change”; he has focused on the electorate’s priorities of the health service, education and the difficulties facing first-time house buyers; and he has routed the opposition. In a remarkable turnaround, a Conservative opinion poll lead of eight points in April became a Labour lead of nine points last week.

Many commentators think Brown’s success is down to him shifting to the right, and beating the Tories on their own ground. Even so conservative a publication as the Daily Mail has lauded the prime minister for his tough stance on late-night drinking, gambling and drug-taking. The business community has also been won over. A former City editor said to me last week: “Business is pro Labour. It should be renamed Capital.”

But this is not the whole story. On each of the electorate’s priorities, Brown has moved towards higher spending, higher taxation and more government, and away from the public sector reform efforts of the Blair government. It is not an exaggeration to say that in 30 days the government has undone much of the progress achieved by its predecessor in 10 years.

On health, its main policy is a 12-month review of the NHS. This is the last thing the service needed. The gigantic spending increases of the past eight years – the NHS now costs more than £4,000 for every family in England, compared with £2,000 (in real terms) in 1999 – mean value for money should be the number-one goal for health ministers. Yet Tony Blair’s reforms were already one to two years behind schedule and a further year’s hesitation puts the reform drive into question. Private sector companies have seen several key contracts with the NHS delayed or cancelled in the past month, despite their excellent record of treatment.

The reform drive is also lacking in education. Ed Balls, the new schools minister, has struck a blow to the heart of one of the Blair government’s most promising reform programmes: city academies. The thinking behind academies was to provide teaching of real quality in inner-city areas.

To facilitate this goal the academies were given greater independence from local and central government, including the freedom to set their own curriculum. However, Balls announced that new academies will now have to follow the already devalued national curriculum in English, maths and science. This “man from Whitehall knows best” attitude will undermine the opportunities of less well-off children.

To aid first-time buyers, the government has pinned its hopes on a centralised national house-building programme. Instead of this Kafkaesque micromanagement, it would do better to look at its tax policies and their effect on first-time buyers. The problems are both specific (rates of stamp duty are prohibitively high) and general (18 to 34-year-olds face an effective tax rate of nearly 50% of income). In fact, young people are now truly the iPod generation – insecure, overtaxed, pressurised and debt-ridden.

But there is no indication of any respite. The initial decisions of the Brown government will push up spending and can only put upwards pressure on taxation.

This matters because Britain deserves better. The survival rates for stomach cancer patients are twice as bad in the UK as in Germany; only three in 10 16-year-olds get good GCSEs in English, maths, science and a foreign language.

The problem is not money. The problem is a tight government grip that prevents services changing and improving. Blair grasped this by the end of his time in office but left the implementation to his successor. Instead, the new government has taken a step back.

Brown has capitalised on the public’s demand for change. But the change offered will not deliver the improvements the electorate wants. Simply put, that requires radical education reform to allow every child to succeed in an increasingly advanced economy; and public spending control to enable a fairer level of taxation.

In the end, Brown’s first month as prime minister is not as successful as he may think: his initial decisions have set the stage for future failures in both public services and the economy.

Andrew Haldenby is director of the independent think tank Reform. Its report Retreat from Reform is available at www.reform.co.uk

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