Gordon Brown is odds-on to be prime minister before the end of 2008. If it is well managed, the Brown transition could help to realise the centre-left's dream of governing Britain for a generation. The still-popular framework of New Labour policy will remain in place, but a jaded electorate will be placated by a change of accent and appearance. Despite the recent flare-up in Blair-Brown tensions - fanned as usual by the two men's courtiers - most of the contributors to our Brown symposium agree that the differences between them on the big issues remain slight. More counterintuitively, our Prospect/YouGov poll finds that Blair is the tribal politician not Brown, with the latter commanding the respect of many who voted Tory at the last election (a case of better the devil you don't know?).
Derek Scott wonders whether Brown's personality and working style might make him unsuitable for the top job. That may underestimate the extent to which the job would change him. A more current concern is over whether Brown may have lost his knack for strategic thinking. In the early days of New Labour after 1994, and then in power after 1997, Brown was the long thinker. But recently, he seems to have been more reactive, placing limits on Blairite radicalism in the public services without offering a clear strategy of his own.
Brown's nightmare must be Anthony Eden's story: groomed for years as Churchill's successor, he was swiftly brought down by a crisis in foreign policy, his field of expertise. The Brown equivalent would be an economic crisis in 2008-09 in which he is seen to exacerbate the problem. A fear that the economy will turn bad on him if he waits too long for the top job must be one reason for Brown seeking the crown sooner rather than later. Eventually, too, the Tories will find their stride, although judging by Robin Harris's Thatcherite excoriation of Michael Howard inside, their internal war has some way to run.
If this issue feels a bit politics-heavy it is because our usual British politics special issue coincides this year with the finale of the US election, hence John Ikenberry's important essay on US power and a US-dominated review section. Richard Dawkins, Ben Lewis, Yiyun Li, Aharon Appelfeld, Nadine Meisner and others offer alternatives to the narrowly political.
