The juries are still out

Welcome to the new world. That, at least, is what Gordon Brown and his advisers would have us believe. As politicians take up cudgels for the autumn season, the Prime Minister pledged yesterday: "It cannot, and should not, be business as usual." Mr Brown is right to say all parties have an interest in changing the way politics is run. The British public has disengaged progressively from politics to the point where barely 60% bother to vote in a General Election and only one person in 88 belongs to a political party. Some see this as the inevitable consequence of a prosperous society more concerned with pleasure than bread-and-butter issues. Others blame the shallowness of politics and absence of ideology. Whether this keynote speech compounds or challenges that view remains to be seen.