The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, last night launched an inquiry after a memo revealing his private doubts about his government's image and performance was leaked to newspapers.
Downing Street sources said that the consequences for whoever leaked Mr Blair's memo would be "very serious".
The memo outlines a wide range of policies - ranging from crime to asylum seekers, family issues and defence - on which Mr Blair says that the public has the impression that the government is "out of touch with gut British instincts".
Mr Blair asks his closest advisers to come up with policy initiatives and media opportunities with which he can be personally linked and which will restore Labour's image in the public eye.
In the memo, Mr Blair suggests that a whole range of public dissatisfactions are linked by the factor that the government does not appear to the ordinary person to be "on your side".
Mr Blair says that he is worried that his government is perceived as failing on the tests of "toughness and standing up for Britain".
But he insists, in the memo, that the problem is one of perception, rather than substance, saying: "It is bizarre that any government I lead should be seen as anti-family."
The memo is signed TB and was written on April 29th.
It came at a point when the government was under sustained attack from the Tories over the sale of Rover, the asylum issue and the life sentence handed out to a farmer Tony Martin for murdering a burglar. Mr Blair suggests finding a senior judge to reconsider the issue of whether murder convictions should always attract a life sentence.
And he says that the government must publicise cases in which asylum-seekers are removed from Britain, along with positive decisions for genuine refugees, in order to dispel the idea that the country is being over-run by bogus claimants.
He says that the government must "highlight the tough measures" on crime, giving maximum publicity to plans to drugtest suspects, the jailing of burglars under the "three strikes and you're out" legislation and the confiscation of assets of drugdealers. And he calls for action to bring down the level of streetcrime, especially in London, stressing that this will have a disproportionate effect on the forthcoming crime figures.
He also says that Labour needs "two or three eye-catching initiatives that are entirely conventional in terms of the family" in order to dispel the impression that the government is overly concerned about gay rights.