Brilliant tactics but what's the strategy?

Across the country, people actually appear to believe the Prime Minister stands for "change" and a "new politics". How do they know? Because he's told them! New politics means, says Brown, "engaging with people and not excluding them ... debating concerns and issues ... not just in the corridors of power, but throughout the country".

Of course. So that'll be why Gordon wants to strip next week's Labour conference of its right to "debate concerns and issues" by ending its power to discuss topical motions of its own choosing. They'll now be debated in Labour's policy forum instead. In private.

That'll be why Gordon won't hold a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty, even though the vast majority of the Commons wants one. No "excluding people" from that "issue and concern" is there? And that'll be why he dominates his Cabinet more than anyone since Margaret Thatcher

... Yes, I'm coming to her.

Back in June, Gordon's claim to newness began plausibly enough. There could be no doubt that he was not the same person as Tony Blair. It then became less plausible. With a few exceptions, policy has been marked by continuity, not change. Even Brown's many reviews are a tactic copied from the opening months of Blair; a kind of déjà review.

A fortnight ago, amid the "new politics" prattle, the plausibility deficit started to widen. The new politics consist, apparently, of citizens' juries and a Speaker's Conference to discuss the voting system. What, you mean electoral reform? No, but I will let you talk about moving polling day from Thursday to Sunday.

There'll also be new powers for Parliament. What, like the power to call an election at a time when it won't give the incumbent an unfair advantage? No, but I will let you appoint some bishops.

And then, last week, came the Resurrection of Maggie, surely the point at which Brownian gesture politics - or even gesture "new politics" - tipped into farce. What did Lady Thatcher's invite to Downing Street mean from the man who built an entire political career attacking her?

Tactically brilliant it was, throwing the poor old Tories off balance again.

Their impotent fury has been fun to behold. But strategically stupid it will prove. Brown may think he's a Thatcherite. But he is no Thatcher.

Love her or hate her, and I hated her, Thatcher was not a gesture politician. She did not promise what she had no intention of doing. But in his promise of openness, newness, inclusion and consultation, Brown is transparently a man pretending to be something he's not. His recruiting of Tories was not to open British politics; it was to win party advantage, to close it down.

Eventually, just as with Blair, we will reach disillusion, a disillusion all the fiercer for having initially believed. Eventually, in politics, the truth does find you out.