Watching Gordon Brown announce his Draft Legislative Programme a couple of weeks ago gave me a distinct feeling of deja vu, not just because the statement marked Brown’s umpteenth re-launch after less than one year as Premier but also because it contained proposals I remembered from my days in the Conservative Party Policy Unit during the last Parliament. It is not just Conservative tax policies that Brown is now copying.

Back in 2004, together with the then Conservative Housing spokesman John Hayes, I authored a pamphlet outlining ways to help more people onto the property ladder. Along with extending the Right to Buy to Housing Association tenants our other main proposal was to massively expand shared equity schemes by devoting at least 50% of the budget for new housing support to them. Now Brown has announced that all first time buyers will be able to apply for shared equity mortgages, subject to an income limit.

Another proposal in the draft legislative programme, the Savings Gateway Accounts scheme, sounds suspiciously like the Lifetime Savings Accounts Conservatives have been advocating for several years. Both schemes would encourage those on lower incomes to save through a matching Government contribution.

The real crime committed by Brown is not to have pinched Conservative ideas – that is one of the hazards of Opposition – it is to have taken so long to do so. If the Government had implemented these policies back when they were first proposed they would have helped to negate some of the impact of the financial crisis we now face. Shared equity schemes would have eased the pressure on the housing market and enabled state support to help many more people than can be achieved through building social housing for rent. Moreover, at a time of rising house prices, share equity would have generated funds that could have been recycled for more support. At the time housing experts expressed their dismay to me that the Government was missing the opportunity presented by shared equity. Similarly, if Lifetime Savings Accounts had been in place for several years they could have played a part in helping people through the difficulties they face now the days of easy credit are over.

The fact is that Brown has taken too long to address the problems created by the credit boom of the last decade. Perhaps he believed his own rhetoric and thought the days of boom and bust were really over. But whatever the reason, his failure to plan for the future means that the current economic slump will last longer and be worse than it might have been.