Sitting down to write this column in the wake of England's latest penalty shoot-out heartbreak, it is sorely tempting to use it to explore the increasingly close relationship between politics and football. National mood is a strange, indefinable thing - but there can be little doubt that the nation's success or failure on the football field plays a major part in shaping it. It was a phenomenon that first came to the fore in the 1960s, as the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson rode the wave of England's 1966 World Cup triumph. Four years later it was to rebound on Wilson, as he lost the 1970 election days after England threw away a two-goal lead in that infamous quarter-final against Germany at Leon. Tony Blair, who has inherited Wilson's talent for tapping into the zeitgeist, is himself all too aware of the power of the Beautiful Game. Soon after coming to power, he launched an audacious bid to try to bring the 2006 World Cup finals to England, knowing the sense of national euphoria this would create. With all his talent for long-range planning, Mr Blair knew that the run-up to the tournament would coincide with what he hoped would be Labour's bid for a third-term. Actually, all the bid achieved was to upset the Germans, who had secretly been promised the tournament and resented England's late entry into the race. Then, of course, there was Mr Blair's unforgettable attempt to woo his North-East heartland by reminiscing about the days he spent watching Jackie Milburn from the Gallowgate end at St James' Park. Even if it didn't really happen - Milburn retired when Mr Blair was two - it at least showed that the Prime Minister's heart was in the right place. So doubtless Mr Blair will now be lamenting England's Euro 2004 failure with particular intensity. Victory in the tournament could have given his flagging premiership a much-needed boost, but it was not to be. So what else can Mr Blair now do to give his administration the required lift? As the recent local and European elections showed, there is no longer any great enthusiasm for him personally, and much hostility towards him on the issue of Iraq. But as he sets out on the long march towards that historic third term, the Prime Minister has one great big enormous trump card left to play: the Tories. And this week, Mr Blair and his colleagues were playing it to the full as they sought to make the National Health Service the central issue in that election campaign. It does not take a political genius to work out why the Government has embarked on this strategy - a cursory study of political history will do. The establishment of the NHS in 1948 was Labour's greatest achievement and will forever be linked with the party in the public's mind. The Conservatives may convince the public from time to time that they are better at managing the economy, or dealing with foreign governments, or cracking down on crime and disorder. But I seriously doubt whether they will ever convince the British electorate that they are better at running a health service whose creation they opposed and whose values they have never shared. The current Tory proposals on health, which Labour's own policy launch on the issue this week were designed to highlight, is likely only to strengthen this general impression. While there is an argument for encouraging the better-off to go private to relieve pressure on the NHS, the Tories' plans are too easily caricatured as allowing them to jump the queue. My gut feeling is that it will not be politically possible for any party to win an election on such a platform until NHS services are at least on a par with those offered by the private sector. The private sector will then be reduced to a position whereby its role will be to complement the NHS and increase its overall capacity, rather than compete with it. Of course, none of this is to say that Labour's own proposals on health are necessarily perfect, given Mr Blair's continuing obsession with the ``choice" agenda. His vision of ``personalised" health care designed around each patient is certainly ambitious, but whether it really reflects what the public wants is another question Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy argued in the Commons this week that what people really want is not a choice of hospitals, but for their local hospital to perform better. Given that I made precisely the same argument in this column last month, I find it impossible to disagree with Mr Kennedy. Likewise, I would suggest that Mr Kennedy's viewpoint is likely to have considerably more resonance in those parts of the country that consider themselves traditional Labour areas. To many, though not all, Labour voters in areas like the North-East, choice is an essentially middle-class concept which has little relevance to their lives. It follows that the likely outcome of an ``NHS election" is a Labour victory tempered by continuing loss of support to the Lib Dems in what were once its heartlands. Doubtless Mr Blair, who has never let sentiment get in the way of his wider aims, would consider that a far better result than the one England managed in Lisbon. | 
