There can be no starker assessment of a Government’s record in office than the impact it has had on the life expectancy of the people it is meant to represent. The latest statistics from the Office of National Statistics comparing life expectancy in the country’s different local authority areas are a damning indictment of where New Labour’s priorities have really lain over the last 12 years.

Life expectancy for men in the wealthy London area of Kensington and Chelsea in 2007, according to the latest ONS statistics, was 83.7 years. For women it was 87.8. Contrast this longevity with the life expectancy of people living in the poorest areas of Scotland. For men in Glasgow city life expectancy is 70.8 years, nearly 13 years less than their rich southern counterparts. For women in Glasgow city life expectancy is 77.1 years, over 10 years less than the women in Kensington and Chelsea.

Some in government will argue that improving life expectancy for the poorest in our society will always be an intractable problem or that time is needed to turn round this super tanker of an issue.

But New Labour has had twelve years in government and had more terms in office than any other Labour administration. Moreover it has had Parliamentary majorities and at times genuine popular support that nothing could stand in its way if only it had the political will to implement the policies that could have radically changed the life chances of the people of Glasgow and every other poorer neighborhood across the country.

Gordon Brown has become the personification of that abject failure of political will and wasted opportunity. When he inherited the Labour leadership he was welcomed euphorically simply because he wasn’t Tony Blair and offered the promise of change. Within months he had blown it because of his failure to offer any change in either policies or the methods of government. The onset of recession and economic insecurity gave him a second chance as people sought a Prime Minister that would take decisive leadership. 6 months later and he has blown it again.

At every stage in responding to the latest crisis of capitalism Brown has been behind the curve. Even in marshalling a very basic Keynesian response everything he has done has been too little too late.

The classic Keynesian response would have started with an immediate and significant cut in interest rates. Brown had given away control of interest rates to the Bank of England Advisory Committee, which bizarrely was still worrying about inflation 12 months after it was obvious that the problem was deflation. As a result he failed to cut rates fast enough or hard enough to stabilize asset values.

The second Keynesian step would have been to apply a significant fiscal stimulus, particularly aimed at boosting the spending of those that need to spend and will spend, ie the lowest paid, and link this to increasing demand in the medium and longer term by investment in public services and infrastructure. Instead we got a derisory cut in VAT and cuts in public expenditure as income from taxes started drying up. Infrastructure spending has been slow to stagnation in getting off the ground because the public sector vehicles that any government would normally use have either been debilitated by past cuts or privatized and the private sector won’t co-operate in taking the risk.

The next elements in a Keynesian package would be a combination of quantitative easing by large scale government intervention largely in the bond markets or just printing some money and where the banks fail to play ball to establish a public sector bank. At last the Government is moving towards some limited quantitative easing but is floundering still in its approach to the banks purely because Brown and Darling have an ingrained 1980s fear of the concept of nationalization.

The result of this crass political failure is that Gordon Brown’s only strategy is to repeat continuously the mantra that this is a world crisis, hope that his hosting of the G20 next month will convince the country that we are indeed led by a world leader and hope also that something will turn up by 2010.

There is an alternative based upon taking radical democratic control of our economy at every level from national economic strategy, including public ownership of the banks, to the restoration of the role of local democratic institutions in economic investment and planning within their areas, to the establishment of democratic rights of trade unions within the decision making processes of their firms or service.

The question isn’t just about who pays for this crisis but more importantly who takes control in resolving it. The LRC, linking with other organisations and individuals on the left, are supporting the People’s Charter to promote the intensive discussion and campaigning for that alternative. We will betray this and future generations if we stand back and allow this crisis to be resolved by the suffering, unemployment and poverty of working class people only to allow the system to be stabilised and risk inevitable future crises. We have the opportunity of a radical break through if we seize the moment.