This Christmas ought to be a time when social democrats can at last toast Tony Blair's government. No previous Labour administration has presided over such rude economic health, even though it must now face the effects of a global recession. Ministers talk openly of the need to increase spending - if necessary through raising more taxes - on health, education and other public services. (Most encouragingly, the high priests of the International Monetary Fund sniff heresy, and have begun to issue po-faced warnings.) More money flows to poor people and their families. Yet most of us will go easy on the celebrations; this is a government that commands less loyalty, less affection, less enthusiasm the longer it goes on. Why? Because it suffers from bone-headed arrogance.

Two points need to be made at the outset. First, arrogance is a disease from which all governments suffer to some degree, and inevitably so: if they did not seem reasonably sure of themselves, we would accuse them of indecision and inability to deliver. Second, governments of the left will often appear dirigiste because they believe in collective action, redistribution of resources and a measure of equality. If you want a child in Sunderland to have as good a start in life as the child in Solihull, you have to accept some "top-downness" from your government.

But it is hard to defend new Labour's greatest excesses on either of these grounds. Take the publication of the reports on the summer riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. Before their release, David Blunkett gave a newspaper interview in which he raised issues about "British norms of acceptability" and the need for citizenship tests. These were not in themselves objectionable proposals. But the Home Secretary, presumably quite deliberately, had set the agenda for the debate on the reports: an agenda dominated not by the need to tackle questions of urban poverty and segregation, still less by the need to outlaw employers' prejudice against ethnic-minority job applicants, but by the need for Asians themselves to behave better. This was typical. No inquiry report is now issued without ministers telling us in advance what to think about it. The news agenda must be controlled and open debate pre-empted at all times. Could ministers not sometimes just issue a report and await, with some semblance of interest, other people's views?

Control-freakery has become a cliche. But is there a better description? While policies on health, education, transport, pensions, Europe and much else are often blurred and contradictory, control is a clear and consistent theme. Ministers tried to ensure, in the most ruthless fashion, that devolved London, Wales and Scotland were all run by new Labour placemen. They insist, preposterously, that government-approved MPs chair Commons select committees, which are supposed to scrutinise the executive. They appear to believe that Britain is the only country in the industrialised world that cannot tolerate an elected second chamber. They force out of office the woman appointed to keep an eye on MPs' behaviour. They bully a backbencher whose campaign against the war in Afghanistan cannot conceivably threaten the government's parliamentary majority. They propose to do away with most jury trials. They drive through a terrorism bill that erodes civil liberties, insisting that we shall just have to take their word for it that the country is in imminent danger.

Popular opinion is often wrong. Ex-pert opinion is often wrong. But when the two are in agreement - over ministers' plans for London Underground, for example - they are usually right. Think rail privatisation, think poll tax; then ask yourself when you last heard anybody, other than a loyalist Labour MP, defend public-private partnership for the Tube or the government's model for a new House of Lords or the treatment of Paul Marsden. It is part of the arrogance of government to think that it alone can be right. It has the facts, the vision, the wisdom. It has a job to do, and it must not be distracted by the ignorant or ill-informed. Too much fiddly democracy just holds things up.

To all this, ministers may reply that they have won two elections and that they remain comfortably ahead in the polls - indeed, no political party has ever enjoyed such sustained popularity. Why should they care, so long as the economy stays on course and the votes roll in? In the same way, a company management will say that nothing matters except keeping up the profits and satisfying the shareholders, and hang what people think about its business ethics. In that sense, new Labour has become the McDonald's of the political world: widely reviled, but still the unchallenged market leader. But even McDonald's now worries about its public image.

This government has a tin ear for democracy and an alarming indifference to liberty. Its arrogance has become intolerable. This Christmas, we must borrow Cromwell's words and beseech it, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible that it may sometimes (in fact, quite often) be mistaken.

Not many threatened

So Muslims are oversensitive, are they? Excitable chaps liable to throw bombs around? Last week, our cover story discussed doubts about the origins of the Muslim holy book, the Koran. We knew the article would be offensive to many Muslims (particularly the headline, "The great Koran con trick"), just as our coverage of 11 September was offensive to many Americans. We nervously awaited reaction. We received two phone calls from the Muslim Council of Britain, both stern, both utterly courteous. And, er . . . that was it. The postbag was heavy, but rarely abusive. (We print a selection on pages 61-63.) The reaction from Americans, three months ago, was more threatening and more hysterical. Oddly, most offence was taken, on the Muslims' behalf, by white academics. So can we now stop stereotyping Muslims, accept that they are as various in their views and attitudes as any other group (see Maureen Freely, page 18), and generally stop nannying and patronising them?

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