It was vintage fighting rhetoric from Tony Blair in Brighton yesterday as he addressed the Labour Party conference. He made it abundantly clear, without saying so explicitly, that his much-talked-of departure from 10 Downing Street will be later rather than sooner and that he will stay for as long as it takes to secure his programme of reforms.
Mr Blair is the most successful leader in the history of the party with three successive election victories. He retains, for the moment, complete control of his departure timetable. He knows from the polls that he remains popular with Labour voters.
Unfortunately for him, Labour voters are fewer in number. This year's election victory saw 9.5 million vote for the party; in 1997 the party secured 13.5 million votes. Labour Party membership has halved over the same time. This is a party in power but it is also a party indisputably in decline. A swing of just 3 per cent at the next election could sweep it from power. It has 20 MPs nursing a majority of less than 1,000 while 100 of them have a majority of less than 5,000. Perhaps the keenest listeners to Mr Blair yesterday were the party's growing number of nervous MPs.
They may get even more nervous. The economy is faltering, manufacturing is in recession and the budget surplus inherited from the Conservatives has been turned into a huge deficit. The economic slowdown will worsen the public finances and consumer confidence is very low; not surprising for a nation with personal debt now standing at a colossal £1 trillion. In addition, the situation in Iraq, which is largely outside Mr Blair's control, shows all the signs of postponing the exit date for British troops into 2007 or beyond.
Mr Blair was at his most coherent and convincing yesterday but the valued "middle England" voters may not be swayed by his rhetoric to the extent that they used to be. They may instead be persuaded by the criticism from Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who argued that "what people want are quality schools and healthcare and safe streets. After eight years of Labour, they're still waiting".
Mr Blair urgently needs to reaffirm his government's sense of purpose. Public spending has shot up by two-thirds under Labour, but the benefit to the public is far from commensurate. Mr Blair, and latterly his chancellor, Gordon Brown, drone on about reform. The electorate, however, will need convincing that this is not just reform for the hell of it but reform that will deliver clear benefit to those whom the public services fail time and again.