At the end of last week's column, I described Tony Blair's spin doctor Alastair Campbell as a walking reminder of why Britain, as well as Iraq, now needs regime change. It was not, in fact, a deliberately provocative conclusion designed to make the assembled Labour hordes in Gateshead choke on their cornflakes, though it may unintentionally have had that effect. It was, rather, born of a growing personal conviction that the forthcoming election represents an opportunity for Britain to make a fresh start. The Prime Minister, in his speech to Labour's Spring Conference on Sunday, begged to disagree, likening his relationship with the public to a marriage going through a rough patch and pleading to be given another chance. On the face of it, this has to go down as one of the more extraordinary speeches from a leader who has made a career out of coining memorable conference soundbites. The marriage analogy should perhaps not be extended too far - after all, marriage is supposed to be for life, and even Mr Blair has made clear he won't be around for ever. But either way, there can come a time in a relationship where you just have to move on - and my view, for what it's worth, is that the country has now reached that point. I concede that it is, as yet, a minority view - but the rough ride suffered by Mr Blair on his daytime TV appearance on Wednesday suggests it might not necessarily be an isolated one. All sorts of reasons have been advanced for the breakdown in trust between Mr Blair and the public, from the war in Iraq, to tuition fees, to spin. In our own region, frustration over the Government's abject failure to address regional economic disparities has undoubtedly played a part. I do not want to be churlish about the recent positive announcements that have been made in this regard, which are of course welcome even if they look suspiciously like electioneering. But it does beg the question why it has taken a Labour Government - a Labour Government - eight years to realize that its North-East heartland needs a bit of a hand-up. The sense of let-down felt by the North, however, points to a much more fundamental reason why the public - and in particular Labour's traditional supporters - have lost trust in Mr Blair. It is, quite simply, because the Prime Minister has turned out not to be the person we thought he was. We thought - though perhaps we should have known better - that he was a genuinely progressive politician who would use his two landslides to build a lasting centre-left consensus in this country. But that golden opportunity has been squandered for the simple reason that Mr Blair's instincts are, and always will be, to pander to the political right. As a small illustration of how the centre of gravity in British politics has shifted rightward during his premiership, I will cite an incident from my own career at Westminster. Back in 1996, when I was working for a Welsh newspaper, a right-wing Tory MP named Walter Sweeney gave me an interview in which he said householders should have the right to shoot burglars. When the story appeared, Sweeney found himself swiftly ostracized by a horrified Tory hierarchy that wanted nothing to do with his madcap proposal. He lost his seat shortly afterwards and, as is usually the way with politicians, blamed my story for having wrecked his hopes of a junior ministerial job in the Welsh Office. Yet the very policy which less than a decade ago caused shockwaves of revulsion in the main party of the right is now to all intents and purposes the policy of the main party of the left. And of course there are numerous other examples - most notably on immigration - of how the two main parties are now seeking to outdo each other in right-wing rhetoric. One commentator this week described Mr Blair as the most right-wing of all Britain's post-war Prime Ministers with the exception of Mrs Thatcher, and he is right. And even Mrs Thatcher, as has been noted on many previous occasions, did not try to involve the market in the provision of public services to anything like the degree Mr Blair has done. It is facts such as these that pose some very uncomfortable questions for those of us who take a left-of-centre view of the world. Would such cherished left-wing causes as free university education and the public service ethos of the NHS actually have been safer under the Tories than they have been under Mr Blair? Would it, in fact, be better to have a Tory Government which tried to reach out to the left than a Labour one which is continually seeking to appease the right? Perhaps if that prospective Tory Government had been led by the likes of Ken Clarke or Chris Patten rather than Michael Howard, the answer to that question may very well have been yes. As it is, the unappealing choice of Howard v Blair will tempt many to vote for Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats, even though they are not yet genuine alternative contenders for power. There is, however, one man who is: Gordon Brown. The question facing centre-left voters at this election is how to bring about the regime change at the top of the Labour Party that should have occurred in the wake of the David Kelly affair. So can we vote Blair, but get Brown? Next week, I will try to give an answer. | 
