In July the likely trajectory of the rest of the political year looked like a honeymoon for Gordon Brown, ending at some unspecified date, with an election in May 2008, and most of the political focus on fissures in the Tory party.

Now, there is unlikely to be an election before 2009. People are not going to vote in that election because they remember this week’s PMQs. Or because of the answer Brown gave to the press conference about how he would have reacted if the polls showed a 100 seat majority.

Returning from the political front to normal life, most people think you have got too much time on your hands if you know as much detail as I have set out in the last paragraph. And most people are unmoved by the thought that a political leader might have thought he was going to have an election because he thought he would win, and then decided against it because the opinion poll lead weakened. Is the Pope a Catholic?

But the effect of these events has been to transform what the next general election will be about. Instead of it being a choice principally between a well-respected and successful Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a rather lightweight Leader of the Opposition, now it will be about competing visions for the future of our country. The election is going to be about policy not politics.

And those visions need to have their definition in clear policy choices. If you are confused over whether you support grammar schools or not, nobody is going to believe your vision.

The effect of the election being delayed will make it harder rather than easier for the Conservatives. They might have made progress in the early election. Then they would have been in a strong position to harry the government.

Now the election when it comes will be about much harder policy issues. And the next eighteen months will be about developing policy. All those difficult choices between Zac Goldsmith, and John Redwood remain for the conservatives. You would have thought the choice between the planet Zog, and Notting Hill wouldn’t be that difficult.

Making clear our vision is the challenge for the Labour Party now. Because if we rely on experience and our ability to handle the crises which come along and do not set out, in the coming months our vision for the future of the UK, a vision which represents the progressive view of politics, then we will be offering drift not leadership, and the past not the future.

The person who understands this best is Brown. Over the last ten years he has been willing to face up to new challenges. He was the one who drove the independence of the bank of England, which has contributed so much to the strength of our economy and has enabled it to withstand the shocks from around the world better than almost any other country. He was the one who realised that economic prudence over decades had to be the policy.

And he has a vision of a UK, strong in the world for the values of freedom and democracy; of its people able to realise to the full their potential, whatever class creed or colour, through a strong education system, an effective criminal justice system, and a well-run health service, and an economy adapting to the changing world economy and able to offer jobs and opportunity to those who aspire to success in our community.

This vision needs to be spelt out, fleshed out and defined in policy choices. It needs to build on the work which has been going on throughout the last ten years.

The work, for example which is going onto improve the city academies programme. That programme raises the standards of secondary education in a meaningful way not just in the academies themselves but in all the schools nearby. And the public want high standards in education. Ed Balls, and John Denham in the higher education field have the ability to define and drive a whole range of new policies in education. They will come up against opposition from some quarters. But sometimes getting on with everyone is not possible if you want to deliver real improvements.

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