Gordon's guarantee - does he mean us?

Gordon Brown's election launch included "a direct guarantee to every single citizen of Britain" on public services.

Many of these services are run by devolved governments in Scotland and Wales, which may lead you to wonder whether the "direct guarantee to every single citizen of Britain" is worth the paper it wasn't written on.

This is what the PM said outside No 10: "I want to give a direct guarantee to every single citizen of Britain that when you need the police, when you need help with cancer care, when you need your GP at the evenings or at weekends, when you need as a child to have personal tuition in your school, then these public services will be there, directly guaranteed to you as an individual citizen when you need them and accountable to you and your family."

Your GP at evenings and weekends? Personal tuition? These sound like England-only pledges, available only to some of the citizens of Britain. Labour certainly cannot guarantee them in Scotland.

This is the more carefully-worded text version of what he said, from the Labour website: "I pledge this guarantee, a personal guarantee for you - that when you need to get in touch with the police, when you need cancer care, when you need access to a GP in the evenings or at weekends, when you need one to one tuition for your child, our public services will be there guaranteed to you and accountable to you and your family."


We will have to wait for Labour's Welsh manifesto, written by the Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant, to discover how the party squares the circle between what Mr Brown said and what he can actually deliver.