Putting the headlines of recent weeks to one side - the funding issues, the misplaced data discs, etc - and concentrating on strategy and philosophy: how has the labour movement received their new leader after these first few months?

For people like me, who opposed Brown's candidacy from the left and supported a different candidate, there has been nothing in any of his public statements or declarations that suggests that we were wrong to do so.  I think we can feel vindicated: we argued that you couldn't put a piece of paper politically between Brown and Blair and he has continually demonstrated that to be the case: his early moves appeared to reinvigorate the New Labour project, bringing it back home - so to speak - as a project for fundamentally turning the Labour Party into a centre/centre-right party.  So the 'government of all the talents' (as long as they were non-Labour talents!!), the abolition of voting at party conference and now the reanimation of the old debate about the union link can all be seen in that context.  Philosophically, Brown continually refers to the deepening of Blair's public sector reforms and the role of the private sector in public service delivery.  The emphasis on Britishness is a new(ish) addition to this philosophical rightward shift.

With this in mind, I would have to assume that those Blairites who vehemently opposed Brown must be quite reassured (recent headlines notwithstanding) - they have got one of their own without ever having to stand a candidate.

The people who must feel betrayed and let down, I suppose, are those on the centre-left and centre who felt that Brown promised something different and clung onto a notion that Brown was a more labourist and social democratic figure than Blair.

Are my assumptions about the views of Blairites and the centre-left and centre correct, or do you feel somewhat differently?