I find it painful to watch Gordon Brown these days. He was wandering around the garden of 10 Downing Street with Barack Obama during the ‘coming one’s’ UK visit looking like an overgrown schoolboy trying to please. How ironic that this brooding presence during the New Labour years, who hung like the sword of Damocles over Tony Blair, brooding and plotting to get his job, has seen it all go so very sour.

Gordon Brown, who to all accounts privately is warm, witty and bright – and who wanted this job all his political life – appears though to be in his political death throes. The convulsions: the early blow he struck himself by bottling the election that never was; three by-election defeats including the cataclysmic Glasgow East (22% swing away from Labour); the removal of the 10p tax band which hit the totemic most vulnerable and poor that Labour is meant to stand up for; the dithering over Northern Rock which its eventual nationalisation and perhaps above all – his lack of ability to make the right call with confidence (or stick to any position he takes). These have all taken their toll. Maybe he will fall; maybe he will limp on.

Whenever we see him now he is ‘getting on with the job’ because that’s ‘what the nation expects’ and ‘listening and learning’ – rubbish soundbites loyally echoed by each of his ministers when caught in the glare of media interview.

Long before Brown became leader, I voiced my doubts as to how he would perform in the role, in particular because of the incessant plotting around him and the way he kept on dodging the big decisions (often by setting up a long term review). Whilst it’s nice to have your prediction come right, it would be far better if I’d been wrong and we had a Prime Minister thriving in the job and leading the country in the right direction. The country is facing extreme hardship and need skill and leadership the Brown – and the Labour Party more widely – appear unable to deliver.

So – what’s a nation to do? Well, no great shock to say that I hope when the nation is asked in a General Election – that it delivers loads and loads of Liberal Democrat MPs.

Labour’s tide of energy and renewal is long gone and the Tories won’t deliver for a nation that has so many different needs. the very, very few snippets of policy statements that have sneaked out from the Tories – all I have learned is that tax changes proposed to date will benefit the 6% of those already the richest in the land and that it is the poor’s fault for being poor.

I think it is time for politics itself to change. Seems to me that simply changing from one dysfunctional party to another isn’t the answer. That sort of politics delivers the same thing time and time again. Initially – there’s a burst of enthusiasm and relief and the new broom sweeps away the by now discredited Government – and then the pattern repeats.

I love to think that each issue might have to be debated and won because it wins enough support in the House of Commons to be voted through on its merits – and not simply because one lot can steamroller it through. This Labour era has seen enough steam-rollering to last a life time. And all that Labour have done has been based on a minority vote in this country – on a mandate (loosely termed in my view) of 35% of the vote.

So roll on the General Election. I’m looking forward to the Liberal Democrats fighting to win every seat and every vote we can – but my personal heart’s desire is that no party should simply be swept in because of disgust with the last one. That will deliver same old same old. We need more than that – we need a change to the way our politics operates.

Time for change – but hopefully not just the faces!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008