Does Tony Blair rue the moment when he declared: "Our aim is that ours is the first generation to end child poverty for ever. It is a 20-year mission, but I believe it can be done"? The Prime Minister's vow in March 1999 provided (or saddled) his administration with its greatest domestic-policy challenge. The government should be praised for the scale of its ambition. Should it therefore be condemned for failing so far to fulfil it?

Since 1999, 600,000 children have been lifted out of relative poverty - defined as households on less than 60 per cent of median income. Blair's team has also made steady progress in alleviating the plight of poor pensioners. These are commendable achievements, to be set against the various disappointments of the past decade.

Figures published on 27 March, showing an increase of 100,000 children living in poverty last year, provide the first evidence of an actual setback rather than simply slow progress. Activists correctly identified it as the worst news in years. We will know only later whether this marks the start of a long-term reverse, or is merely a blip.

The portents are not encouraging. Overall public spending is expected to grow by less than 2 per cent. There will be little spare cash for specific poverty-reduction schemes. To meet the target of reducing child poverty by a half by 2010, a further 1.1 million children will have to be helped. Economists reckon it will take at least £4bn extra a year even to come close to that goal.

Ultimately this is a political, not an economic issue. There is always money sloshing about the system, whatever the state of the finances. Money is found for Iraq. Money is found for Trident. Money is found for a 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax. It comes down to priorities, and, as Peter Wilby points out on page 17, the poor are the group least likely to vote.

A recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that incomes of the poorest 20 per cent rose at roughly the same rate as those of the richest 20 per cent in the first Blair term, and slightly faster in the second. Crucial to any analysis of inequality is the status of the rich as much as that of the poor. Or, rather, the super-rich. In 2005 the NS published a cover story ("The bling bling list") exploring new Labour's unwillingness even to accept that excessive wealth is a problem. Ministers hide behind fears that taxes are seen as punishing success. Is this a case of the public being ahead of politicians? Clearly, if Daily Mail readers are incensed about City bonuses, something is afoot.

There has never been a better time to be very, very rich than under new Labour. The indulgences include: regressive indirect taxation such as VAT; a council tax system in need of urgent recalculation (as the Lyons report attests, but which ministers baulk at implementing); inheritance tax that affects a small minority but does not account for sharp differences within that minority; similar faults in stamp duty; plus the Treasury's perennial refusal to deal with the scam that allows non-domiciled foreign nationals to escape tax on their overseas earnings by spending fewer than 90 days in the UK. And finally, the top rate of tax, that great taboo of modern politics . . .

Labour's record on poverty bears no comparison with the woeful regimes of Thatcher and Major. The glass is half full, but much more needs to be done. Real progress will be made only when ministers see their job as bigger than giving alms to the poor or helping them into desperately low-paid jobs. For a decade, the consensus was to argue that as long as the government improved the lot of those at the bottom, the gap itself was not something to worry about. Anthony Giddens's article on page 28 shows that many who were at the heart of the Blair project realise they understated the extent of the inequality problem.

Some in Gordon Brown's camp see impure motive in this belated conversion. They might have a point, but this should only make them more determined. Though Brown's Budget did provide more for poor families with children, it largely transferred money within income groups rather than between them. Redistribution, it seems, may no longer be a dirty word, but there is little sign as yet that it has become acceptable - and open - political practice.

Proof needed to join the oddballs

At a time when the tabloids are full of stories about Princes William and Harry stumbling out of nightclubs and being photographed with ladies who are not their girlfriends, the case of Robert Brown is curious indeed. Most of us might prefer to keep quiet about any connection with the collection of oddballs, freeloaders, reactionaries and nice-but-dim relations who make up the House of Windsor. But Brown, an accountant, is trying his best to prove that he is a part of this strange family.

Brown, 52, claims he is the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret and her first love, Group Captain Peter Townsend. Not at all put off by reports' claims that while he was being born in Nairobi the late princess was in Norfolk, Brown went to the high court in an attempt to have his putative mother's will unsealed, as he believes it may contain a secret provision for him. Whether or not it does, Brown has missed the boat by a few centuries as far as generous treatment for royal bastards is concerned. Charles II made several of his illegitimate offspring dukes; William the Conqueror was born on the wrong side of the ermine blanket. Alas, such frivolity has been frowned on since the Windsors took to fortifying their bloodline with regular Germanic infusions.

Princess Margaret was known to fortify herself more straightforwardly. If Brown fails, he too should raise a large glass of Famous Grouse - but to his good fortune in staying out of a family more dysfunctional than the Mitchells of Albert Square.

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