What is so noticeable today is the contrast between the attitude of voters in those quite extraordinary days following the election win and how the government is now perceived by the electorate. Then, many of Labour’s foot soldiers in my Birkenhead constituency would regale me with memories of 1945, prophesying that another 1945 would occur. On such a day I would know what it was like to begin breathing in the air of a new Jerusalem.
And so it was. The goodwill towards the government in 1997 was palpable. Had Labour’s new prime minister asked the country to walk on water, that is precisely what it would have attempted. And Tory voters, ground down by the shame of their party’s performance in power, were equally supportive of a government promising radical change.
The contrast between those halcyon days, and the events summed up by the prime minister’s face when the news came through of the death of Dr David Kelly, could not be more marked. A government that only six years previously had held out the promise of a reforming administration in the mould of the Attlee government and the Liberal administration before 1914 appeared to be on the verge of spinning into virtual reality.
Part of the disillusionment concerns the character of the government. Blair promised that his administration would be whiter than white. Again the contrast with Attlee could not be more marked. We know what the older man would have done when faced with allegations that Bernie Ecclestone had been rewarded for his generosity to the party’s coffers. When rumours surfaced in 1948 that a small-time spiv was claiming favours from a Labour government, Attlee established a tribunal of inquiry and the minister who was only marginally involved was driven out of public life.
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The prime minister knows he is in trouble and euphemistically talks about the loss of trust. What to do about this plummeting belief that Labour talks straight is, of course, quite another matter. Even the dumbest observer must conclude that it is impossible to conceive of the new Labour project independent of spin. It is simply asking for the moon for there to be a character transplant. Where the government can make a difference is in its delivery of public services which is, after all, the ground on which it wishes to fight the next election.
A crucial part of the Blair revolution was to write socialism out of the political agenda. Without actually spelling it out, Labour promised to think and behave like the best 19th-century radical administrations. The key then and now to changing the world is a belief in the role of education.
Here the government can boast of achievements. The Tory education reforms centred on the responsibility of each school to perform well. The excuse for past failure, “I teach poor children so what else can you expect”, became, so to speak, a hanging offence. The Tory programme has been built upon by the present government but if Labour wants to set challenges for a third term and begin to achieve them before the election, our goals require radical upward revision.
Britain’s economic wellbeing is going to be ever more bound up with the brains and talents of our workforce. Does anyone believe we have yet begun to address the educational reforms necessary to safeguard our living standards even 10 years from now, let alone 40 years hence? And whatever happened to the promised revolution in welfare? Pensions say it all. In 1997 the UK could boast of more funded pension provision than practically the whole of Europe put together. Unless action is soon taken, Labour will be forced to fight the next election while presiding over the biggest pension collapse outside Argentina.
The failure of the British system to ensure a decent minimum for everyone who has worked or fulfilled their duties as a citizen has been cruelly exposed. In the past this inadequacy was compensated for much of the population by generous company pension schemes. On the most conservative count more than 60% of these schemes now bar new members. The proportion is rising. Britain’s biggest welfare success of the past 100 years is being confined to the history books.
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Plans must be put in place which have the prospect of guaranteeing an adequate minimum pension free of means testing. Such a proposal has been worked up in detail by the Pensions Reform Group and submitted to Whitehall. A government intent on a serious radical programme for the third term, but laying the foundations for those reforms now, could put this scheme on the statute book. Pension reforms are for the long term but the shape of a new contract could be made a reality for voters.
If too little money is being invested in pensions, far too much has been thrown at the National Health Service. Blair and the chancellor are slowly waking to the realisation that by piling record sums of money into the NHS they have demolished the service’s most powerful defence. Disappointing service was easily defended on the grounds that the NHS was starved of resources. No such excuse now exists.
The downside of spin is most dangerously apparent in health. Most people no longer believe what the government says is the NHS’s record of improvement. Again the prime minister needs to set objectives which can be achieved in this parliament and which will pave the way to a consumer-led health service in the third term.
Instead of continuing these record increases in spending across the board, the prime minister would do well to set one clear objective to be achieved by the next election and direct the necessary resources to that end. I suggest that abolishing day waiting lists before voters return to the polling booth would be the clearest sign yet that delivery is being placed above spin. Consultant opposition must be faced down. Foreign teams of specialists need to be commissioned and, if need be, temporary operating theatres built to achieve this objective. Voters would know by the absence of queues that this goal had been realised.
As Gordon Brown struggles to meet his budgetary targets, the prime minister will become more powerful than he has been hitherto. As he reflects on his success in beating Attlee’s premiership record, Blair would be well advised to concentrate on setting a few clear goals, as did his predecessor, and go for them before the voters get their chance to pass judgment.
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The author is Labour MP for Birkenhead