One of the great unaddressed issues in this general election has been the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Plenty has been written about him in respect of his feud with Tony Blair, how he rode to the rescue of Labour's election campaign and how Blair has now apparently become his prisoner. The widespread assumption is that he will become Prime Minister during the next Parliament when Blair steps down, a prospect which doubtless will encourage many to vote Labour because, just as they despise Blair, they love Brown.

This is because, by contrast with Blair, Brown is seen as a substantial intellect, a man of principle rooted in the granite of Scottish Presbyterianism, a solid homme serieux unlike the fey fantasist next door. And most crucial of all, they also think that he is responsible for the success of the British economy. Never mind that his first act was to make the Bank of England independent, thus ensuring that he could never radically destabilise the economy; the public seem content to agree with his own estimation that he is responsible for Britain's low interest rates and low inflation.

The most remarkable aspect of this is that the Conservative party also appears to believe in this mythology. For despite occasional rumbles about impending 'black holes' and Brown's reckless largesse with the public purse, the Tories' economic package is merely a paler imitation. While they have gone all-out to blacken Blair's character, Brown has been all but off-limits during the campaign, suggesting that despite themselves the Tories believe the spin that the Brown chancellorship has indeed been a great success.

But it has not. And now The Business has produced an absolutely excoriating analysis of its failure, and the dangerous legacy that Brown has bequeathed us. Here's a flavour:

'Eight years later the economy and business are beginning to buckle under the weight of extra tax and regulation and Britain is fast slipping down every league table of international competitiveness; yet, with the exception of a significant reform to the National Health Service (NHS) which allows a small but growing number of operations to be contracted out to private hospitals, almost nothing has changed in the public sector - even though it has been in receipt of an unprecedented avalanche of taxpayers' cash. Mr Blair's reformist agenda has stalled because he allowed his collectivist Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to take control of domestic policy and block any significant change in the post-1945 welfare state consensus.

'The result was predictable. Far from being the envy of the world, Britain's unreformed schools, hospitals, universities, welfare benefits, social services and police forces continue to fall behind those of other rich and not so rich countries, despite the massive injection of taxpayers' money. Crime, especially violent crime and yobbery, is out of control in substantial swathes of the country, making the lives of ordinary, decent people - the sort it should be Labour's priority to protect - a misery. Hundreds of thousands of children - mainly from the poorest families - still leave Britain's schools lacking even the basics of education, often incapable of reading even a fast-food menu. Social mobility is receding despite all the ministerial waffle about spreading opportunity. An unreformed welfare state continues to suck greater numbers into a feckless underclass whose defining characteristics are crime, the black economy, lifelong welfare dependency, indifference - even hostility - to education and idleness. The UK's once-great universities are sinking fast, slipping further behind their American counterparts every year. Britain's armed forces, the world's finest, have been slashed to the bone despite Mr Blair's penchant for deploying them across the globe. The transport system remains a disgrace for the fourth richest nation in the world. And, to cap it all, an all-mighty savings and pension crisis is brewing.

'Billions of pounds of taxpayers' hard-earned cash have been squandered. Instead of bringing better homes, schools and hospitals to those who most need them - the poor and socially deprived - the main winners from the Blair government's spending binge have been a new left-wing, politically-correct, highly-paid, functionally useless public-sector bourgeoisie which - together with human rights lawyers - has emerged as the New Establishment in Blair's Britain.'

There's much more in this article that simply scorches the page. I don't agree with all of it, particularly where it denounces Blair for lying over Iraq. But its analysis of the Brown legacy is spot on. Brown gave the macro-economy to the Bank to run, while he got on with manipulating and ruining the fabric of the nation. The problem is, however, that all the 'new left-wing, politically-correct, highly-paid, functionally useless public-sector bourgeoisie' have votes. Brown has effectively gerrymandered the nation by making unprecedented numbers dependent on work or welfare -- a fact that the Tories have conspicuously failed to address because they want their votes, too.

The Business calls for tactical voting to get Labour out. It is possible that, despite the polls, enough people will do precisely this -- along with Labour voters staying at home in disgust -- to produce the result that many seem to want, a hung parliament. If this does come about, the ensuing paralysis will surely be an apposite commentary on the unhappy state of affairs we have reached where no party seems to deserve to govern us. But if Labour win another large majority, it will be in large measure because turkeys will have voted for Christmas.