Brown's Queen's Speech challenge

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
Political correspondent, BBC News website

Anyone watching Gordon Brown's first legislative programme being unveiled this week by the Queen may be forgiven for experiencing an overwhelming sense of deja vu.

Queen's speech will set out Brown's programme

We have, after all, heard most of it all before - in the pre-Queen's-speech speech last July, when the prime minister broke with tradition and announced in some detail what he was planning to put into his package.

He then launched a series of events, notably citizens' juries, to debate his proposals in a "widespread and informed public consultation", as he called it.

The move was clearly designed to show how new and open Mr Brown was as well as giving him a chance to gauge how some of his more controversial ideas may go down before finally committing to them.

It also meant he got two bites at this particular cherry, secure in the knowledge that no matter how familiar the real Queen's speech might appear, it is still guaranteed to receive wall-to-wall media coverage.

The downside was pretty obvious too. It gave the opposition parties plenty of time to pick his proposals apart and prepare their lines of attack before the big day.

Housing crisis

Still, there must be a risk that, when Mr Brown's programme is unveiled, it will be greeted by a chorus of yawns as he goes over old ground on the key issues, as identified last July, of education, health and housing.

There are, however, a couple of issues at least which are certain to liven things up and provide some excitement and controversy.

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When Mr Brown delivered his summer statement the housing crisis was at the top of the political agenda and it looked then as though it was set to be one of the defining issues of Mr Brown's first period in office.

He made sure there were a number of measures included in his package to boost the creation of affordable housing, promising to build over a quarter of a million more homes than previously planned, leading to 3 million new homes by 2020.

Things, however, have moved on and, thanks to recent events, immigration has shot to the top of the agenda and looks likely to stay there, certainly if David Cameron has anything to do with it.

Housing will remain a key priority for the government, but it is a long term project and, of course, it plays directly into the worries over immigration.

So, details of the criminal justice and immigration bill outlined in the summer may overshadow the housing-related measures.

Radical vision

This is one of the battlegrounds Mr Cameron has chosen to fight on, believing the government's plans for a points system for new immigrants and a border force - which he claims is a weaker version of the Tories' own proposals - are inadequate to meet the challenge.

There is also likely to be fresh controversy over plans to increase the length of time terror suspects can be detained without charge.

Tony Blair suffered a Commons defeat when he attempted to increase it to 90 days, with MPs only agreeing at that time to double it to 28 days. Mr Brown plans to extend it further, possibly to 56 days.

Plans to extend detention may prove controversial

Whatever he plans, the prime minister hopes to head off a potential backbench rebellion by stressing new safeguards to protect civil liberties with greater judicial and Parliamentary oversight.

Meanwhile there will be the move to ensure all youngsters remain in education or training until 18 and, as ever, there are likely to be some surprises to provoke cheers from backbench Labour MPs.

But perhaps Mr Brown's greatest task is to use this speech to get back onto the front foot after the poll setbacks following his snap election stunt.

That has seen him losing much of the political momentum, perhaps even goodwill, which he gained in the immediate aftermath of his succession.

He needs to show he has a genuinely radical vision for the future - something even his internal critics have questioned - and is something more than Not Tony Blair.

David Cameron, on the other hand, will be seeking to prove the opposite - that the 10 years of, in his view failed, Labour government is continuing under Mr Brown.

He will undoubtedly claim the government's programme is more of the same, delivered by the same old faces who have been getting it wrong for a decade.