Some dark reality from Labour's 'Blue sky' thinker

From anybody else, the cheap cynicism would be shocking. From this Government, it is disgusting but no surprise. As we know, it has a way of trying to bury bad news.

With the nation's eyes turned benevolently towards Africa by Live8, one of the most devastating series of documents ever to be published by Whitehall was slipped on to an official website at going-home time on Friday.

Lord Birt's reports on the real state of Britain under New Labour are astonishing because they explode all Tony Blair's claims to be setting the nation to rights.

Here is a condemnation and an admission of failure that cannot be dismissed or ignored. For once, it is also impossible for Labour's dirty tricks experts to smear the source. The bad news comes direct from the pen of Mr Blair's personally chosen guru and consultant.

Leave aside for now the fishy nature of the arrangement under which Lord Birt continues to work for the consultants McKinsey while they snap up lucrative contracts for advising the Government. This is an issue that is likely to return to haunt the Prime Minister.

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What is really startling is the unflinching catalogue of failure in every important area of Government responsibility, exploding Labour's repeated claims of success and progress.

Reporting on crime on December 20, 2000, Lord Birt concluded: "A huge number of indictable offences of all kinds are committed in Britain each year."

He came up with a figure of 130million, far larger than any official tally ever published until now.

A few months later, Labour's General Election manifesto was claiming: "Overall crime is down ten per cent in Labour Britain." Had the Birt figure been published, it would have blown the bottom out of Labour's claim to be tough on crime.

A year later, while parroting dubious official statistics on school improvements, a Birt report on education admitted to a significant number of relatively weak schools, recognised that most teachers thought pupil behaviour had got worse and complained that private schools - used by many senior Labour supporters and Ministers - were showing up the poor performance of state schools.

The Birt dissection of Britain's health policy was similarly bleak and his analysis of the failure to provide a proper transport system on roads or railways is grim and pessimistic.

From anybody else, the cheap cynicism would be shocking. From this Government, it is disgusting but no surprise. As we know, it has a way of trying to bury bad news.

With the nation's eyes turned benevolently towards Africa by Live8, one of the most devastating series of documents ever to be published by Whitehall was slipped on to an official website at going-home time on Friday.

Lord Birt's reports on the real state of Britain under New Labour are astonishing because they explode all Tony Blair's claims to be setting the nation to rights.

Here is a condemnation and an admission of failure that cannot be dismissed or ignored. For once, it is also impossible for Labour's dirty tricks experts to smear the source. The bad news comes direct from the pen of Mr Blair's personally chosen guru and consultant.

Leave aside for now the fishy nature of the arrangement under which Lord Birt continues to work for the consultants McKinsey while they snap up lucrative contracts for advising the Government.

This is an issue that is likely to return to haunt the Prime Minister.

What is really startling is the unflinching catalogue of failure in every important area of Government responsibility, exploding Labour's repeated claims of success and progress. Reporting on crime on December 20, 2000, Lord Birt concluded: "A huge number of indictable offences of all kinds are committed in Britain each year."

He came up with a figure of 130million, far larger than any official tally ever published until now.

A few months later, Labour's General Election manifesto was claiming: "Overall crime is down ten per cent in Labour Britain."

Had the Birt figure been published, it would have blown the bottom out of Labour's claim to be tough on crime.

A year later, while parroting dubious official statistics on school improvements, a Birt report on education admitted to a significant number of relatively weak schools, recognised that most teachers thought pupil behaviour had got worse and complained that private schools - used by many senior Labour supporters and Ministers - were showing up the poor performance of state schools.

The Birt dissection of Britain's health policy was similarly bleak and his analysis of the failure to provide a proper transport system on roads or railways is grim and pessimistic.

From anybody else, the cheap cynicism would be shocking. From this Government, it is disgusting but no surprise. As we know, it has a way of trying to bury bad news.

With the nation's eyes turned benevolently towards Africa by Live 8, one of the most devastating series of documents ever to be published by Whitehall was slipped on to an official website at going-home time on Friday.

Lord Birt's reports on the real state of Britain under New Labour are astonishing because they explode all Tony Blair's claims to be setting the nation to rights.

Here is a condemnation and an admission of failure that cannot be dismissed or ignored. For once, it is also impossible for Labour's dirty tricks experts to smear the source. The bad news comes direct from the pen of Mr Blair's personally chosen guru and consultant.

Leave aside for now the fishy nature of the arrangement under which Lord Birt continues to work for the consultants McKinsey while they snap up lucrative contracts for advising the Government. This is an issue that is likely to return to haunt the Prime Minister.

What is really startling is the unflinching catalogue of failure in every important area of Government responsibility, exploding Labour's repeated claims of success and progress.

Reporting on crime on December 20, 2000, Lord Birt concluded: "A huge number of indictable offences of all kinds are committed in Britain each year." He came up with a figure of 130million, far larger than any official tally ever published until now.

A few months later, Labour's General Election manifesto was claiming: "Overall crime is down ten per cent in Labour Britain." Had the Birt figure been published, it would have blown the bottom out of Labour's claim to be tough on crime.

A year later, while parroting dubious official statistics on school improvements, a Birt report on education admitted to a significant number of relatively weak schools, recognised that most teachers thought pupil behaviour had got worse and complained that private schools - used by many senior Labour supporters and Ministers - were showing up the poor performance of state schools.

The Birt dissection of Britain's health policy was similarly bleak and his analysis of the failure to provide a proper transport system on roads or railways is grim and pessimistic.

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In fact, his reports confirm the view of most observant citizens that, after several years of large tax increases and the disastrous State plundering of private pension schemes, there is little to show in return and even less sign that the Government has any serious ideas for real change.

Much of the money is simply trickling away, used to create non-jobs for Labour supporters or to feed an enormous and uncontrollable welfare system.

This is plainly not what either man had in mind when Lord Birt was hired to do the Prime Minister's 'blue skies thinking'.

Until now the most dramatic development to come from his specially constructed new office was the news that the ceiling had collapsed.

Now something else has collapsed - New Labour's long pretence that it is a serious, reforming, modernising Government capable of tackling the deep and pressing problems of our society.