Two Labour landslides, but two quite different orders of history. Where Clement Attlee set up the welfare state, Tony Blair has rescued it. Where Attlee’s Labour Government reconstructed the economy from the ashes of the Second World War, ours has modernised and stabilised it.
The different scales of challenge for both Governments mean different benchmarks of achievement, making a nonsense of comparisons suggesting that Attlee was “radical” and Blair “timid” (or even “Tory-ish”). Attlee’s era was one of “big government” — of centralised planning, nationalisation and a huge council house building programme. Our era is one of “enabling government” — of regulated markets and where two thirds of homes are privately owned.
Labour’s benchmarks today still need to be radical. For example, since 1997 the real incomes of the poorest tenth of society have risen by 15 per cent while those of the richest have fallen by 3 per cent. This gap needs further narrowing.
But it is no accident that Tony Blair today surpasses Attlee’s record to become Labour’s longest continuously serving Prime Minister.
Yes, we have made mistakes. We have been too cautious in some areas: for example, we should have kick-started investment and reform in transport and energy policy much earlier. We have also run the risk that serious hiccups, for example over tax credit payments and school funding, might undermine the bigger picture: tax credits have hugely boosted those on low incomes and there are record rises in school spending.
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We have also failed to inspire our voters, new or old, partly because we have become trapped in the “Westminster bubble” where politicians and media incestuously scrap over soundbites and spin, and turn off voters, readers, listeners and viewers by the million. This is at the heart of the “trust” problem Mr Blair has openly acknowledged the Government now faces.
It is also partly why the Iraq controversy — and especially the David Kelly tragedy — has been so testing. We have hit the worst “mid- term blues” since 1997.
But, however grumpy public opinion now is, people do recognise that we have got the fundamentals right. We have the lowest interest rates, lowest inflation and the highest employment in living memory. Health, education and other public services are steadily improving, with spending increases greater than any other comparable country. Britain is a more modern, more generous, less selfish and less mean spirited country today.
Although the Tories are starting to look a little more like an Opposition, they are nowhere near where they need to be. Having blown their first term under William Hague (like Labour did between 1979 and 1983), it must be depressing for Iain Duncan Smith to find himself still behind where even Neil Kinnock was in the polls in the mid-1980s, when Labour had more than a decade of opposition still to go. Despite our current problems, the Tories are barely level-pegging with the Government, and the Liberal Democrats are hovering ominously, well above their usual mid-term poll ratings.
The Prime Minister himself continues to tower over British politics. Nobody else — and certainly none of the opposition leaders — comes near to having his authority, either domestically or, still more, internationally.
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Given these factors, how does Labour win back trust and move forward to win the next election? First, we need fewer policy initiatives and more focus on delivery. I sense a public impatience with constant announcements of new initiatives dominating the news agenda. We need to have the confidence to let people experience on the ground the way health, education and crime are improving.
Our language, too, must be less technocratic. Instead of adopting Westminsterspeak, we must communicate our passion for social justice, fairness and decency in plain words. I am constantly struck by how few people actually know what we have achieved. Attlee achieved many things. But he did not conquer poverty pay by introducing a national minimum wage. We did. He did not devolve power to our nations and regions. We have. And by 2005 we will have more than doubled to 7.2 per cent of GDP the 3.5 per cent that Attlee devoted to the NHS.
None of these achievements, nor the limp state of the Opposition, gives us the right to expect a third term. We have to fight for it. Having laid the foundations of a stable economy and rescued the shattered public services, our mission now must be nothing less than to transform Britain: to build a truly world-class economy with full employment, health and education standards at least on the European average, a much fairer and more equal society, a transport system that works, and a greater investment in green energy.
If we can realise that mission, I believe history will judge us well — and admirers of Clement Attlee will realise that in Tony Blair we have a worthy successor.
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The author is Leader of the Commons and Secretary of State for Wales