You have been in power since 1997, and have achieved (aside form a bit of constitutional vandalism) very little. The greatest electoral mandate ever has been squandered. A lot more tax spent on utterly useless pen-pushers. Billions spent on management consultants, and an ever more thirsty-for-cash, but otherwise unreconstructed NHS. There has been little reform of education (except a lowering of standards). Tuition fees, a sticking plaster to cover the disastrous target of 50% participation in higher education without offering commensurate funding, has become this governments second-most unpopular policy.

There has been no major change from the Thatcherite economic consensus. What redistribution there has been, is deeply flawed. It has failed to reduce poverty or inequality. Indeed the richest decile have done very well out of this administration, whose toadying to new money is quite craven. Gordon Brown's most successful decision was operational independence for the Bank of England, a Liberal Democrat Policy, hardly one aimed to please the unreconstructed class warriors of the party's heartlands. The only policy that has made them happy is a spiteful bit of legislation banning fox-hunting. Otherwise New Labour is a wannabe Tory party, spending a bit more on the NHS and hiring more disability rights commissioners and meddling counterproductively with the tax system. This is hardly radically socialist.

So your PM, Tony Blair is popular (or at least good at winning elections) because he has successfully stolen the Tories' clothes, but they don't fit, so nothing really works as intended. He wins despite the Labour party, not because of it.

The Tories have lost their self confidence, as a result of agreeing with much of Blair's rhetoric, whilst tearing their hair out at the delivery, they find it very difficult to tell a coherent story. Because the wheels have not yet come off the economy, and the Tories do not yet look like a Government in waiting, the Electorate will stick to what they know. The Tories' malaise has been a great part of this government's electoral success.

As soon as the Labour party lurches leftwards under Gordon Brown, the country will kick them out of office. "Best when we're Labour". Really? Last time we had a "real" Labour Government, the UK had to go Cap in hand to the IMF, bodies went unburied and the litter piled up. Dole queues snaked round the block, and it took the Tories a decade to sort out the mess.

Labour activists, how does it feel to know all your cherished prejudices are electoral and economic suicide?