Brown’s brain and his hand are not always connected

The cause of Brown's other welcome was his statement on constitutional reform, presented with the fervent gravitas of John Knox. Here, Brown implied, the constitutional tectonic plates were shifting. Long ago power passed from monarch to parliament, then from parliament to the executive. Now it was to pass back to parliament and the people. Brown then cried at his congregation of sinners: "Consult and be judged."

At this point any scholar of Brown studies counts his spoons. Most of this stuff we have heard before. The prime minister has long talked the talk about trust, empowerment and popular engagement. Yet as chancellor he never walked the walk. The only bodies to which he delegated anything were the Scots parliament and the Bank of England, and the latter is coming unstuck. Anyone scanning the list of changes is entitled to ask, "Does he mean it?" New Labour has never been able to deliver on its speeches.

Most of Brown's list were rusty implements in the constitutional toolshed, either executive powers more apparent than real, or ones whose delegation will prove more apparent than real. Let the Church of England appoint its own bishops. Surely a historian of the great Scottish Disruption of 1843 could chance his arm mooting the disestablishment of the English church. Parliament can now declare war, dissolve parliament, ratify treaties and cross-examine quango appointees. But it always has, de facto. There is no mention of allowing free votes on such occasions or allowing select committees the right of veto, as with the American Congress.

Welcome is the rescinding of various Blair egotisms, such as unelected aides entitled to give orders to civil servants and illicit protests outside Downing Street. The first was sparked, I am told, by the cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell, flatly refusing to allow Brown's closest but most abusive and overbearing aide, Shriti Vadera, architect of rail and Tube privatisation, to cross the threshold of No 10 as policy enforcer. No permanent secretary could stand her, so Brown had to fob her off with junior office and a peerage.

Equally welcome is Brown's decision to end Blair's use of the attorney-general as a legal spin doctor and his disregard for the ethical vetting of ministers. This suggests that Brown is of a more liberal temper than Blair.

But where is the main course? From his 1992 Charter 88 speech to his 2005 Hugo Young lecture, Brown has demanded more trust in politicians, more power for parliament and more devolution to civic government and community empowerment. Yet he fights shy when it comes to implementation.

There is no withdrawing the whips from Commons committees, no granting them properly paid chairmen or executive obedience to their scrutiny. While the media always laud them as "influential", ministers laugh and Whitehall burns their reports. The public accounts committee is about as effective in disciplining agency performance, computer contracts or the aid budget as the audit committee of Enron or BAE Systems. There is no point in letting parliamentarians cross-examine unelected quango appointees if they cannot first veto their appointment.

Parliament's decision on dissolving parliament is meaningless, given that the decision is bound to be whipped or the result of a backbench rebellion and vote of no confidence as now. There is no point in yet another code of conduct for ministers if Downing Street retains the power to overrule it. As for a new "consultation" on a written constitution, some of us have been debating that since we were in short trousers.

Brown's intentions are all in the right direction. But his track record is of a persistent disconnect between brain and hand. The most dysfunctional part of the constitution, by general consent, concerns the linkage between policy and decision at the top and delivery down the line. Since Blair snapped those links with his "24/7 headline" style of government, the civil service Rolls-Royce has been going round in circles.

Brown's love of targetry and ring-fenced grants has failed the delivery test and led to a larger core civil service than ever in peacetime. Now, with localism the talk of the Rialto, Brown offers merely a "concordat" between local and central government, a continuation of Blair's "empowerment by consultation". The appointment of regional ministers revives an abortive Tory gimmick.

Regional government was a top-down Thatcherite innovation that has been in expensive operation since 1994 with no ounce of local consent. When put to the test of referendum in the northeast of England in 2004 it was rejected. People wanted power to rest with their cities and counties. John Prescott and Brown disagreed.

I sense that deep in Brown's political psyche is a realisation that democracy should reflect the citizen's yearning for more control over his environment. It is a spirit that moved the Scottish enlightenment, English utilitarianism and, for that matter, Thatcherism's "market consumerism", which guided most of Blair's public service reforms.

Brown seems to understand that declining political activity reflects not just the apathy of prosperity but a readiness to leave general decisions on priorities to Whitehall oligarchs. But he is not yet up to implementing what this means.

It is no good central government simply "consulting" the people, as in Ruth Kelly's new Leninist planning regime. Political activism has become local rather than national, concerned with town and country planning, street safety and cleanliness, hospital standards and neighbourhood immigration, domestic as well as foreign. Unique in Europe, Britain's central government claims these tasks and yet is bad at performing them. Local government on the whole works and offers a framework for social responsibility that Brown still will not accept.

Significantly Brown's first two quasi-constitutional measures run directly counter to his declaration. One was to inflict yet another central review on the NHS, when the latter is screaming to be left alone for just one minute. The other was Hazel Blears's proposal to hand such discretionary funds as Brown has left to local government over to neighbourhood "stakeholders" to spend by plebiscite or public meeting. This is to be "an experiment".

Blears seems unaware that it was normal vestry administration from the 16th to the 19th centuries and is customary in American townships and France's 36,000 communes. Nor will she allow elected councils to raise and spend resources through local taxation. This is not localism but tokenism.

Brown is adamant that public services cannot be left to the mercy of local democracy when that democracy lacks financial accountability. But he will not grant it that accountability, regarding local finance as a morass into which he dares not tread.

Those of us who have been preaching localism for years know only speeches and bitter disappointment from politicians. Brown professes to want a government that can revive citizenship and reinvigorate democracy, "humble enough to know its place" and "trust more power to the British people". But he does not put words into action.

He is no longer at the Treasury, where control demanded he master all he surveyed. He is now prime minister, young, eager and with everything to go for. Unlike Blair, he knows what needs to be done. Can he not summon up the courage to do it?