Seriously now

Anything involving or touched by Gordon is, perforce, Serious. Gordon and frivolous or merely light don't go together comfortably. I actually listened yesterday to most of his speech delivered to a rapt audiance at Bournemouth. Listening to Gordon is hard work. My attention wavered and I did, eventually, switch off - but only after losing track of Gordon's argument, if that's the right word for what he delivered.

I'm still not quite sure what Gordon was advocating.

Early on he said: "I stand for a Britain where everyone should rise as far as their talents can take them and then the talents of each of us should contribute to the well being of all. "

Further into the speech he said: "In Britain today too many still cannot rise as far as their talents can take them."

And then he elaborates, at length on this theme as follows:

How many men and women who hope to move up the ladder in mid career are deprived of the chance to upgrade their skills and jobs? How much talent that could flourish is lost through a poverty of aspiration: wasted not because young talents fail to reach the stars but because they grow up with no stars to reach for?

And how many of our youngest children are still deprived of the early learning they need. Why should we accept so many children destined to fail even before their life's journey has begun?

So this is the next chapter in our progress. The next stage of our country's long journey to build the strong and fair society.

I want a Britain where there is no longer any ceiling on where your talents and hard work can take you. Where what counts is not what where you come from and who you know, but what you aspire to and have it in yourself to become.

Past generations unlocked just some of the talents of some of the people. In the new Britain of this generation, we must unlock all the talents of all of the people. Not the old equality of outcome that discounts hard work and effort.

Not the old version of equality of opportunity - the rise of an exclusive meritocracy where only some can succeed and others are forever condemned to fail.

But a genuinely meritocratic Britain, a Britain of all the talents. Where all are encouraged to aim high. And all by their effort can rise.

As is the case with most political speeches it is necessary to hunt carefully for the meat, or in this case what's causing the faint feeling of indigestion or nausea. There it is. What Gordon wants to see and is offering the world is a bit of good old fashioned leftist social engineering. Equality of opportunity is no good if it doesn't offer equality of outcome, so it will be massaged and managed until it delivers equality of outcome, irrespective of the extent to which it still resembles equality of opportunity.