If there is one thing likely to bring down a Government, it's sleaze - and that new political disease, spin. Chris Lloyd discovers that, like the Tories before them, New Labour has failed to keep its image clean

WE were told five years ago that things could only get better. And, by and large, they have.

But rather than singing and dancing in the streets, barely half of the British public dragged themselves to the ballot boxes last year, and already this year disillusionment is in the air. It is because of sleaze and spin.

The sleaze is far more innocent than the Conservative variety of personal gain and dubious personal habits. It has concerned almost exclusively donations to the party - but it looks just as bad in the headlines.

Boss of Formula One, which relies on tobacco advertising, gives £1m to the party and, lo and behold, the party changes its policy on tobacco advertising.

Steel company boss, at a time when British steel companies are shedding jobs in Wales and on Teesside because of over-capacity, gives the party £125,000 and, lo and behold, the Prime Minister signs a letter which assists in his purchase of Romanian steel plant.

Man suspected of corruption in his native India gives £1m to the party's favourite project - the Millennium Dome - and, lo and behold, he gets a British passport which may help him evade charges at home.

To its credit, Labour has tried to clean up its act.

It quickly set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life, in 1997, and one of the chairman's first acts was to order the party to pay back Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone's £1m donation.

It also passed legislation revealing the names of donors who give more than £5,000 to party funds, which allowed Lakshmi Mittal's steel manoeuvrings to become public.

And Peter Mandelson did quickly resign (for the second time) over the Hinduja brothers' passport affair, even though subsequent inquiries have found that while he may have obfuscated, he did little wrong.

But it has all been damaging to the party that came to power pledging to be "whiter than white".

More damaging has been the party's reliance on spin. There are now 72 "special advisors" on the Government's pay-roll, and even Mr Mandelson, the Machiavelli of the dark arts, advised after the 2001 General Election that Labour should roll back the spinners.

But, after countless examples of double and triple accounting, where new money was announced on several different occasions and counted in several different ways, this year's shenanigans at the Department of Transport have merely confirmed the public's suspicions.

Jo Moore, who survived her attempts to "bury" bad news on September 11, resigned along with her boss Martin Sixsmith, after newspapers printed stories claiming she suggested trying the same tactic on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral.

Again, Labour tried to clean up its act. Cabinet ministers' new mantra is "to tell it straight", and Gordon Brown's 2002 Budget, after his previous four had sneakily raised taxes, was explicit in how it was going to collect extra money to spend on the NHS.

But then, just last week, the Prime Minister himself was caught spinning again. Mr Blair announced that, by September 31, the Government would have eradicated street crime. At face value, it appeared a brave and laudable - if surprise - target.

But two days later, it emerg-ed that new technology would mean that mobile phones - the subjects of most of the rise in street crime - would be rendered useless if stolen.

Lo and behold, the new technology would be in operation by September 31.

And so the public, believing that once again the wool has been spun over its eyes, turns its back on another initiative that will only make things get better but has been cynically manipulated to put the Government in the best possible light.