Gordon's vacuum is putting Right on Left track

No, just as disappointing has been the failure of this Prime Minister to come up with anything to convince us that he is committed to challenging old inequalities and deliver a fairer society.
Education in this country is a vehicle for perpetuating social inequality, everyone knows that. There is a direct link between the worst-performing schools and deprivation. Grammar schools take a disproportional amount of youngsters from wealthier backgrounds. And then there is the network of fee-paying schools which are simply beyond the reach of many families.
The Tories have branded it a "national disgrace" that nearly half of children from deprived backgrounds - ie youngsters on free school meals (FSM) - fail to get a single good GCSE compared to a national average of 24 per cent.
A FSM child is also 193 times more likely to leave school without a good GCSE grade than go on to gain three As at A-level.
Is that something we should accept as a fact of life or should we seek to challenge it?
To tackle this - and the inequality of life that springs from it - reforming education is key. Labour made a big song and a dance about doing just that. It invested a lot of cash in schools. It introduced many sensible policies. But when it came to addressing the social inequality that our education system perpetuates, measures like city academies represent little more than a tinkering around the edges.
Britain is a more socially divided country now than it was when Labour came to power. A report last year by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found the gap between rich and poor to be at its highest level in 40 years.
There will, of course, always be rich and poor. Some people will do better in life - financially, though not necessarily in terms of happiness - than others.
You can't legislate against that nor should you. But what you can do is put in place systems to create as level a playing field as you can.
An education system that creams off the most able pupils or separates youngsters based on their parents' ability to pay does not appear to work towards that. Quite the contrary.
Seeking to address such inequality is not, as some would suggest, the "politics of envy", but the politics of compassion. Yes, it maybe idealistic and difficult, but if we don't aspire to the idea of a fair and just society, then we may as well crawl back into the swamp.
Which is kind of where Gordon Brown is at the moment, isn't it?