The Blair Years

'TODAY, enough of talking. It is time to do.' Tony Blair, Downing Street, May 2, 1997, after his first landslide victory.

"Time to deliver." The Northern Echo's front page on June 8, 2001, after his second landslide victory.

Today, five years after the first and nearly a year after the second, we are still waiting.

There will be no ringing endorsement for Labour at tomorrow's local elections; there will probably be a few embarrassing defeats. There is disillusion in the air, reflected in last year's 59 per cent turnout, and a feeling that there is too much spin on statistics.

But . . . There is the minimum wage which has helped 1.5 million people. There is the New Deal which has found work for 125,000 long-term unemployed. There is the working families tax credit which has taken 500,000 children out of poverty.

Recorded crime has been cut by 22 per cent. Primary education has not been healthier for decades. New classrooms have sprung up across the North-East, as have new hospitals. Waiting lists have been cut by 100,000. Hereditary peers have all but gone.

Scotland and Wales have control of their own affairs for the first time in centuries; the North-East may well have a referendum on the same within a couple of years. There is a form of peace in Northern Ireland which, although not perfect, is far better than what is happening in the Middle East.

And there is also economic stability.

For all the cynicism and disillusion and disappointment, there has been delivery.

The euphoric enthusiasm of 1997 has gone, and 2002 finds a resigned acceptance that Labour is slowly - painfully slowly - taking the right path.

This is shown in the polls. One, yesterday, showed that 61 per cent of people thought the Government had performed as well as expected or better in the past five years. Sixty-two per cent thought Mr Blair had done quite well or very well as Prime Minister, and 56 per cent thought Britain had stayed the same or improved under his Premiership. Fifty-three per cent even trust him as much, or more, than they did in 1997.

These are quite phenomenal statistics, as is the fact that all polls during the past five years have had Labour consistently ahead of its main opposition by ten per cent - no government since polling began in the 1930s has been so popular.

And then there is Gordon Brown's 2002 Budget. It got an almost universally negative reaction in the Press for putting up tax - but 72 per cent of the public approved of it. Even 54 per cent of Tory voters approved.

It is, of course, not just Labour's performance that has buoyed up these statistics. They were given a headstart with a healthy economy that has helped many of their plans - particularly the New Deal.

And their opposition has done little to peg them back: William Hague was never personally popular and Iain Duncan Smith is taking a slow path to rehabilitation.

These statistics also give the feeling that people are suspending judgement.

The first five years have, at times, been painfully slow. Only now is there the prospect of real pace in health reform.

And, for all its deliveries, Labour still has not made headway on pensions - the ending of "final salary" schemes is going to be a major issue - or on pensioners, despite the minimum income guarantee.

There is the vexed issue of the railways, concern that the advances in primary education are not being seen into the secondary sphere and there is fear that the crime strategy is more gimmicks than substance.

And that is the nub of New Labour's failings at the end of five years. There has been delivery, but the electorate has become so brow-beaten by the spin and gimmickry that has gone with it, it has become suspicious of every government pronouncement.

Now, more than ever, it is time to strip away the spin and let the delivery shine through. Only then, if there is anything to see, will the air of disappointment and disillusionment be dispelled.