The New Statesman asked a number of public figures to give their verdict on the government's record, two years on.
The questions were:
1 What is the best thing the Labour government has done so far?
2 What is the worst thing it has done?
3 What single thing would you most like to see it do before the next election?
Fay Weldon
1 Best thing: introduced a minimum wage.
2 Worst thing: cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war.
3 Should do next: introduce a 35-hour working week, so we at least get some time for our personal lives. The French have done it and not imploded.
Ralf Dahrendorf
1 Best: the Human Rights Act. Perhaps above all, changing the mood of the country into one of hope and activity, not least by the involvement of young(er) people, starting with the Prime Minister and his (and his colleagues') advisers.
2 Worst: setting off a confused and confusing multitude of constitutional changes (rather like the Yugoslav war) without a clear sense of purpose or coherence, guided by beautiful words ("modernisation") rather than recognisable principle.
3 Next: a clear and explicit position on taxation based on a recognition that the time has come to move the line between the private and the public realm a few degrees in the public direction.
David Hare
1 Best: not been the Tories.
2 Worst: aped the Tories.
3 Next: arrest the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Don't ameliorate Tory policies. Reverse them.
Allan Massie
1 Best: Gordon Brown's sensible management of the public finances.
2 Worst: this stupid and deplorable war against Yugoslavia, the result of inept diplomacy and gross misunderstanding of the Serbs.
3 Next: decide that there is no advantage likely to result from adopting the euro that outweighs the manifest disadvantages of doing so.
Philip Pullman
1 Best: restoring free entry to the great public museums and collections. Charging for entry to the Science Museum and other such places was one of the meanest-spirited of all the measures inspired by Thatcherism; I'm delighted to see it go.
2 Worst: a tendency of which payment-by-results for teachers is one of the manifestations: a wide-eyed enthusiasm for the cock-eyed theories of hard-eyed "management" gurus.
3 Next: put my taxes up. I'm mean and greedy and I don't want to part with a penny of my earnings, which is why I have to be made to.
A S Byatt
1 Best: the solid campaign for literacy. People will always quarrel about how it's to be achieved, but they are attacking the problem doggedly. I was also pleased about the immediate independence of the Bank of England.
2 Worst: not living up to promises on environmental matters, not separating consumer health from agriculture quickly or fully enough. Niggling, nannyish measures like small packets of painkillers, which is a pointless nuisance. Too much "cool", but that's only a matter of style, and one should rise above annoyance about style. I don't like the party-led lists for the Euro-elections, either.
3 Next: stop the fish dying in the North Sea (and everywhere else). Stop the destruction of wildlife habitats. Restore hedgerows. Save the rainforest.
Carmen Callil
1 Best: their work on the settlement in Northern Ireland.
2 Worst: the bombing of Iraq and Blair's offensive speeches about same.
3 Next: a commitment to the euro and full commitment to Europe. But also: proportional representation, completion of reform of the House of Lords, compulsory voting and abandonment of all government involvement in the English education system.
John Humphrys
1 Best: acknowledged that organic farming is a good thing.
2 Worst: failed to cough up the cash needed to encourage more of it.
3 Next: the government must order all factory farmers to hand over half their land to people like me who will then farm it organically. And I get the first choice of the best bits.
Peregrine Worsthorne
1 Best: withdrawing support from the proposed ban on fox-hunting, which would have been the biggest infringement of individual liberty ever committed under a Labour government.
2 Worst: having ever considered lending support to the ban in the first place.
3 Next: I would like Tony Blair to sack his press supremo, Alastair Campbell, whose foul language and scowling visage give the lie to the Prime Minister's decency and courtesy. If all the spin-doctors could also be given the boot, that would be a bonus, as would be the closure of the "think-tank" Demos. The government is doing fine. It is the parasites on the locks of new Labour who poison the atmosphere.
Ben Pimlott
1 Best: to have restored the credibility of the executive, and the nation's confidence in democracy itself. Blair and Brown have shown that Labour can govern. The party's opinion poll lead reflects the colossal relief everybody still feels at the despatch of John Major and his band of zealots and adventurers.
2 Worst: to have undermined the credibility of parliament as a democratic forum, by reducing a once-spirited Parliamentary Labour Party to a body of demoralised and ineffective sycophants.
3 Next: the government should abandon its middle-of-the-road "Third Way" illusion over Serbia. It is a question of deciding to win, which means a bloody and possibly lengthy ground war; or accepting that the bombing attacks have merely made matters worse and finding an excuse for stopping them.
William Rees-Mogg
1 Best: Bank of England independence.
2 Worst: different voting systems for London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. If not the worst thing the government has done, it is certainly the stupidest.
3 Next: follow the Irish example and cut the rate of capital gains tax from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. In its first year, it has raised the Irish revenue from the tax by 50 per cent.
Polly Toynbee
1 Best: Tony Blair's bold and personally risky pledge to end child poverty in 20 years.
2 Worst: perpetuating the myth that we can have better schools, health and transport while paying less tax. First the no-more-income-tax pledge and then the cunning but wrong-headed 1p income tax cut reinforced the right's something-for-nothing fantasy economics. Britain's public places and institutions remain squalid and run-down compared with the rest of Europe, which pays higher taxes. Labour should be honest and tell taxpayers that they will only get what they pay for.
3 Next: transform Britain into a nation of enthusiastic Europeans, eager to join the euro and to engage in a new cross-border politics where European political alliances matter more than the accident of shared nationality with political enemies.
A N Wilson
1 Best: I cannot think of anything for which the Labour government deserves congratulation. The best thing it did was to defeat the Conservative government, which needed to be driven out, but Blair is not noticeably better than Major - in most respects worse.
2 Worst: the readiness to support, with British weapons and servicemen, American acts of murder in Iraq and Serbia. The Defence Secretary, who made Dunblane an occasion for banning the innocent ownership of pistols, now rains down daily Dunblanes on the children of Baghdad and Belgrade.
3 Next: confiscate the laptop computers with which the government has encouraged teachers to waste their time. Restore beef on the bone and the voting rights of hereditary peers. Cut off the hotline to the White House and abandon its Lewinsky-style posture before the US.
Ian Jack
1 Best: the windfall tax.
2 Worst: taking media manipulation to new levels of sophistication, so that sceptical sympathisers like myself are no longer sure if the achievements are real or imaginary. Also, the swift transformation of Prime Minister Blair into President Bloke.
3 Next: make a real difference to our schools and public transport; establish the Strategic Rail Authority (who was it who promised a "a publicly owned, publicly accountable" railway system?).
Mark Leonard
1 Best: ending Britain's isolation in Europe. By coming up with an agenda for Europe to do more of the things that matter to people - on jobs, drugs, crime, the environment and defence - the government has shown that it is possible to play a constructive role while being critical of things that don't work.
2 Worst: the praise for Enoch Powell after he died, even though everything the government is seeking to do on Britishness and a multi-ethnic society depends on defeating the politics of hatred for which he stood.
3 Next: make state schools so good that nobody will ever choose private education for their kids.
Brenda Maddox
1 Best: reforming the House of Lords and making the Bank of England responsible for interest rates.
2 Worst: pretending it could solve the Northern Ireland problem by a public relations stunt - calling a non-agreement an agreement.
3 Next: restore morale at, and eliminate Birtspeak from, the BBC.
Amanda Craig
1 Best: beat the Tories.
2 Worst: become like them.
3 Next: become the party we thought we were voting for.
Joe Haines
1 Best: education - provided it continues to take on one of the most reactionary bodies in Britain, the teaching profession.
2 Worst: the cabinet, collectively, doesn't appear to have read a single history book, otherwise it wouldn't be acting like a global Sweeney, trying to solve the insoluble by bombing it. It could start with Bismarck, who said: "You know where a war begins but you never know where it ends."
3 Next: Make a real change in the country's institutional structure by ending the expensive and restrictive practices still rife in teaching, the law, farming, health and trade unions.
Lisa Jardine
1 Best: restored self-respect to school teachers. For the inner-city boys' comprehensive of which I am vice-chair of governors, two years of Labour government has brought about a sea-change in attitudes and clear beginnings of realistic resourcing. It really feels as if the DfEE under Labour means to bring our state schools back to the standards and standings of the pre-Tory years.
2 Worst: tuition fees for students.
3 Next: cheer us all up. We have fallen into a glum national mood, in which we consistently run ourselves down. I'm counting on a burst of inspirational projects and promises to accompany the opening of the Millennium Dome.
John-Paul Flintoff
1 Best: sneakily raised taxes in last Budget.
2 Worst: destroyed the purpose of devolution by attempting to impose robotic candidates and scheming against heroes such as Ken Livingstone.
3 Next: devise an up-to-the minute costume for the Queen to use when opening parliament - a "fleece", perhaps, and also something made of latex.
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