Sour times for Brown

He loves the devil-take-the-hindmost style of capitalism favoured across the Atlantic, he loves to fling billions of pounds of public money at the imperialist wars started by the US and he loves any US-based "initiative" - no matter how wacky - which can be forced upon the long-suffering British public, preferably by private companies.

When Gordon Brown first came to power, he huffed and puffed at great length about "Britishness" and made sure that he was photographed scowling in front of the union flag as often as possible.

He even suggested the importation of a wholly US idea - the erection of flagpoles in front gardens so that the whole family can salute the flag at the start of every day.

He also declared his concern for the curse of "cynicism," which is infecting British life and causing people to mysteriously lose faith in politicians and great British institutions.

Top Tory David Cameron is also concerned about this affliction, although he prefers to sum it up it with the simple soundbite "broken Britain." Yet both he and Mr Brown share the same peculiar form of blindness towards its causes.

What else explains both new Labour and the Tories' determination to continue razing precisely those institutions that made people proud of Britain, such as the NHS, the Post Office and the transport network?

Rather than face the stark consequences of their support for policies based entirely on the values of individual self-interest and profit, ministers choose to bleat sadly about a "diminution in national pride," as former attorney general Lord Goldsmith put it on Tuesday.

The serviceable new Labour peer unveiled with a flourish his eagerly awaited report on the issue of British citizenship, commissioned by the Prime Minister, only to reveal a series of half-baked ideas flagrantly pinched from across the Atlantic.

Goldsmith claimed that forcing schoolchildren to swear allegiance to the Queen and setting up a new "British national day" will somehow stop the rot.

He lamented the fact that Britain has become a more "divided country" with less sense of "belonging" over recent years.

Apart from the fact that schoolyard pledges of allegiance and ticker-tape parades are a bit, well, un-British, the confused lawyer seems to be unaware of who has presided over the country recently.

The Brown and Blair governments have made a firesale of public institutions and have soured the relationship between the citizen and the state with knee-jerk authoritarianism.

Endless cuts and privatisations have ripped the heart out of communities, while simultaneously giving the super-rich the privilege of opting out of society.

Yet, somehow, the rest of us are to summon up untapped reserves of chirpy British patriotism by government decree.

On top of this nonsense, Blairite torch-bearer John Hutton's impassioned plea for everyone to "celebrate the fact that people can be enormously wealthy in this country" is just another insult for working people everywhere.

Labour Party members need to throw these jokers out - before the voting public does it for them.