Blair puts himself on the line to win trust of British

IT'S all about trust, stupid. That was Tony Blair's response to John Major's attempt to place family tax cuts at the heart of the election agenda. Outlining New Labour's manifesto, Mr Blair sought to recruit public cynicism about politics and politicians' promises.

"The relationship between government and people was shattered when the Conservatives won an election in 1992 on a series of promises, particularly on tax, and then systematically broke them," he insisted.

Hence, the safety first character of his own election offer - the reason Labour made a virtue of its striking failure to "promise the earth" yesterday. Mr Blair carried no magic wands, no instant solutions. With almost overpowering modesty, he would only say: "Britain deserves better, and Britain can be better."

To show how, New Labour would only promise what it could deliver - the party's specific commitments on schools, hospitals, jobs and industry went to the guts of what moved people.

These, said Mr Blair, "are our bond of trust, most of all my bond of trust with the people of Britain". If they kept them, then Labour and the people won. "If we do not, then we will pay the price and will expect to do so."

Such plain speaking is no less than what we have come to expect from Mr Blair. Yet it was extraordinary in that here was a man, seemingly on the verge of power, warning his cabinet in waiting: "If we blow this opportunity, we blow our place in history."

THE modesty was well founded and as predictable as yesterday's visit to the professional. For Labour, of course, wasn't always "new". And Mr Blair can never let his colleagues forget that the electorate rejected the previous creation in four consecutive elections.

Yesterday, he pointed to the revolution over which he has presided as leader. Labour had become a party of enterprise as well as justice. It rewrote its constitution, extended its membership and changed its voting system. Policy, like the relationship with the trade unions, had been transformed.

"Today we are the broad based movement for progress and justice our founders always dreamed of us becoming. Not a party of narrow class or sectional interests. But a true party of the people." Truly Clintonesque.

This was "the eternal warrior against complacency" warning his party that it was still drinking in the last chance saloon. One imagined the discomfort of some of the old warriors - Clare Short, Margaret Beckett, John Prescott - as he followed the painful logic of his confession: that the Tories had been right about enterprise and about trade union reform, and as he warned the union barons that there would be no return to their bad old ways.

However, he wasn't taking it too far - declining an invitation to agree that Labour deserved to have lost all those elections. Rejecting, too, the suggestion of inexperience for office, Mr Blair said that was an argument for permanent one party government. And they had made good their opportunity in opposition, transforming themselves from a party of dogma to one of values.

Those values are set out in Mr Blair's 10 point contract with the people. Education is the top priority, with a pledge to spend more on nursery places, cut classroom sizes, reform the comprehensive system, improve teacher training and discipline, and cut truancy.

Driving the last nail in the tax and spend policies of the past, there will be no change in the top or basic rates of tax. Labour would promote stable growth, keep inflation under control and preside over a dynamic and competitive business sector.

The windfall tax promises to take 250,000 young people off benefit into work. Labour says it will end the two tier health service; reform the welfare state, discouraging dependency and encouraging work and opportunity; fast track the prosecution of persistent young offenders; create a new politics by decentralising power and opening up party political funding; combat pollution and congestion by way of an integrated transport policy; and show leadership in Europe.

It had all been heavily trailed. In the nature of Mr Blair's operation, there were no last minute surprises. He argued that the values were almost as important as the policy specifics because they would inform the way decisions were made. If it lacked excitement, that was fine by Mr Blair.

Yet he defied anyone to say his was not a radical programme, albeit "in the radical centre, modern, forward looking and utterly in tune with the times and instincts of today's Britain".

LABOUR remains vulnerable on several fronts despite Mr Blair's insistence that every promise is costed and that his priorities can be accommodated within the straitjacket of Chancellor Clarke's spending plans.

Labour says it is against selection in education except where grammar schools already exist. And Mr Blair was unconvincing when pressed whether some £150 million to be saved from scrapping the Assisted Places Scheme could be enough to cut class sizes and save teachers facing redundancy. He could only promise to make a start, while asserting that not all the problems in education came down to spending.

He can't tell those 250,000 youngsters that jobs lie beyond their six month training schemes. He will be pressed to say whether he will honour Mr Major's tax cut for married woman who stay home to look after their children or if, and why, he opposes it in principle.

He will be repeatedly challenged to square his newly pronounced Euro scepticism with his promise not to be isolated in Europe. On these and other issues - trade unions and crime - the Tories will go for Mr Blair. And the more so after yesterday.

If they ever harboured doubt, yesterday's performance confirmed it is Mr Blair who stands in the way of a fifth Tory term. This was his personal appeal to the British people, most crucially and specifically his proferred bond of trust.

Sensing widespread disillusion with the performance of Mr Major and his ministers, Mr Blair's own deeply conservative prospectus suggests more a change of administration than a change of government. Labour's internal revolution remains the only one on offer. And if the polls are any guide, conservative Britain seems set to take that, from Mr Blair, on trust.