DELIVERY was the word on everyone's lips after Labour's second landslide victory last June. Even Tony Blair agreed that it was time to deliver.

Eight months on, the Government is embroiled in one row over spin and another, the Mittal affair dubbed Steelgate, about sleaze.

Spin has nothing to do with delivery. It is more about how to dress up what little has been achieved so it looks like delivery. That yesterday's resignations should be from the Department of Transport is particularly ironic as it is a department which has managed to deliver only a worsening railway service with little vision for future improvement. As Stephen Byers cannot even control his own department, it does beg questions about whether he can run a railway.

And the Steelgate affair - essentially about whether Mr Blair did a favour for a man who had donated to the Labour Party - is proof that the Government is still a long way from delivering on another of its promises. One of the reasons for its 1997 landslide victory was its pledge to be "whiter than white" after the long years of Tory sleaze. Five years on, no delivery and Labour looks little better than the Tories.

If any of the spin doctors Labour currently employs were any good, they would be telling the Government it doesn't matter how it looks so far from an election. The only presentation that will matter is the Government's record when it asks for votes at the ballot box. Those votes will depend upon the delivery of improvements to the railways, NHS and schools - not spun improvements, but improvements that people can see and feel every time they use one of those services.

Delivering the promised reputation for fairness not favours might win back some of those who've become so disillusioned with the murky political process that they couldn't even bring themselves to vote in 2001.