Whilst such views are flawed - the government has much to do and doing much - they do, accurately and legitimately, reflect a deeper crisis in Labour, and the left more generally, as a force for progress.

Labour's organisational crisis is deep. We have no money. We have too few experienced organisational staff. The real level of our membership is barely more than half that of the Tories.

But the crisis of the left is deeper still. The organising idea of the mainstream left - socialism defined as the abolition of, or the severe curtailment of, private ownership has proved both to be a failure and, worse still, a route to repression.

Too few on the left are yet prepared to admit this in public but the facts show that over the last half-century the capitalist countries and not the socialist ones have been the most progressive and have done most to liberate their citizens.

But that alone is too simple, too crude, a claim - for it is those societies with a strong social democratic influence and ethos that have been the most progressive. The derided reformists and gradualists have done most to build the good society.

Britain is a case in point. Despite all the claims of the Thatcherites it is Blair, not Thatcher, who has secured economic success for the people. The Tories gave us boom and bust with mass unemployment and called it all 'a price worth paying'.

Labour's success can be measured by the fact it is impossible to imagine any party now running for office and defending the core economic project and record of the Thatcherites.

So if the Labour record on the central issue of the economy is so progressive, why is it that so many progressives fail to identify with Labour and why is it that Labour finds it so difficult to cast itself as the leadership of the progressive forces in Britain?