I was part of a fascinating panel discussion on Tuesday lunchtime. The other panelists were Time's Catherine Mayer, ComRes' Andrew Hawkins and the RSA's Matthew Taylor.
Towards the end of our discussion Matthew (former Head of Strategy for Tony Blair) briefly outlined the speech that he hoped Gordon Brown might soon give. The speech would be the most important of his political life and would tell the British people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Importantly Brown would tell the British people that it was a time for sacrifices - that he was sacrificing some of his most-valued political programmes (eg Educational Maintenance Allowances) and would be instituting a 25% cut in the ministerial payroll. Matthew sets it out in more detail on his blog.
I'm desperate for David Cameron to give such a speech - albeit with more emphasis on how he intends to beat the recession (it'll take more than sacrifices). I know Mr Cameron would have more credibility than the man who has caused the screw up in the first place. I had hoped Mr Cameron was going to give that speech today. He didn't. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock...
