Civitas

The first is that, in its hands, the economy has been and will continue to remain as safe as it would in those of the Tories. (Sorry, I’m just too set in my ways to change!). This is because, so he seems happy to concede, in matters of economic and monetary policy, his party has become and remains no less committed than the Tories to the market-friendly approach it inherited from them.

Mr Blair’s second claim reveals those areas of policy in which, according to him, his party scores decisively over the Tories. In matters of social policy, health, education, crime etc, so the Prime Minister claims, New Labour has delivered and will continue to deliver more than the Tories ever did or would. This is because it has been and continue to remain committed to spending more on public services than they.

Mr Blair writes:

‘The evidence of improvement is there in independent statistics as well as daily experience. … We must follow the logic of empirical evidence which is that reform allied to investment works…It would be disastrous to cut off the investment just when it is producing results, This is the central difference between new [sic] Labour and the Conservative Party. They do not accept the direction we have set for public services.’

It is, therefore, on the all-too-familiar terrain of pubic service spending that Mr Blair reveals he wishes yet again to fight the election. Hence, the title and sub-title of his s article: ‘Why intelligent spending pays off: Reducing public service investment would be disastrous, just when it is working’.

It is for the Conservative Party, and no one else, to respond to Mr Blair’s accusation that, in their hands, public service provision would suffer because they would spend less than new Labout is willing to.

Others, however, are, surely, perfectly entitled to be puzzled as to how the Prime Minister can be quite as sanguine as he gives every appearance of wanting to be thought to be with the track record of his administration in matters of crime, health, education, etc.

On the same day as his article appeared, the Times reported the results of a survey of more than 1,100 people aged 65 years or more carried out by the charity, Help the Aged. This age-group was discovered to be feeling increasingly isolated from society, with ‘more than two thirds [of over-65’s] – about three million – feeling out of touch. Some 9% feel completely cut off from society; 21% feel they have been cast off and of no use.’

It would be overly cynical to suggest New Labour thinks it has solved the problem of their isolation by its 1997 £5 billion raid on pension funds that will increasingly compel this group to work in old age rather than enjoy a few golden years of retirement before the inevitable and irreversible deterioration of their health sets in.

In any case, the nature of their very real problem is not one that can be cured by their continued participation in the labour-force. For this major quality-of-life issue is really about what happens - or, rather, fails to happen -- in their homes after work and during public holidays. ‘Almost two million of the elderly spen[t] Easter alone…’

It is not just the elderly who have become casualties of the steady disintegration of the family over which New Labour has remained content to preside over during its term. Today’s Daily Mail reports a 25% increase in the number out-of-wedlock births in this country in the last ten years, bringing its overall rate to 42%.
A comparable proportion of maerriages end in divorce.

For once, the Archbishop of Canterbury seems spot on, when, as is widely reported in today’s papers, he called on the major parties to do more to support family-life.

As Daily Mail social affairs correspondent, Steve Doughty, observed in his report today on the Archbishop’s intervention: ‘The Archbishop’s remarks reflect a deepening perception among police chiefs and academics that crime and educational and economic failure have their roots in disrupted and single parenthood.’

Curiously, the Conservatives so far have shown themselves reluctant to make family policy a major electoral issue. Perhaps, they remember how New Labour exploited to their advantage past attempts of theirs to do so, claiming they were stigmatising single-mothers and homosexuals.

Arguably, Prime Minister Blair was attempting obliquely to head off having to engage with the issue, when, in his Times article, he included among the policies he alkleged the Thatcherite era had got wrong and that his party was committed to change, ‘head-in-the-sand illiberalism on such issues as sexual equality’.

If New Labour thinks that ever-increasing spending on public services is an intelligent way to use the public's money when all it does is encourage the further fragmentation of families, more fool them.

But that wasn’t always the publicly started view of the Prime Minster. Among random newspaper cuttings I have kept over the years is one from the Times of Wednesday May 25th 1994. It contains a report of a speech made the previous da by Mr Blair in his then capacity as Shadow Home Secretary at an IEA Heath and Welfare Unit Conference on crime.

Quite fortuitously, this conference at which Mr Blair had agreed to talk monhs beforehand proved the first occasion he had opportunity to speak in public after having thrown his hat into the ring for the Labour leadership, following the untimely demise of John Smith.

At the time, his speech was widely interpreted as an attempt by Mr Blair to set out his stall. This is what Mr Blair said in it:

‘[C]rime, drug abuse amongst the young people, [and] poor education... are the signs of a social fabric ripped apart at the seams. Our task is to renew and rebuild our nation as a strong and active society sustaining stable community and family life.’

Judged by reference to this public undertaking, just how successful can Mr Blair claim his party to have been in government under his premiership?

For him to suggest it has been successful must surely make him the ultimate April Fool.

Let us hope the electorate will not be as foolish in May when it falls on them to indicate whether they believe him.