Well to use a well-known phrase it's certainly "the end of an era". Of all the things that will be said about Tony Blair, and no doubt the post-mortems will go on for a long time, the last 10 years have certainly been a time of change. Funnily enough, thinking back over the Blair time, the sense of frustration I feel does not come from any disagreements I might have had with what the government has or has not done. No, it's rather that many of us seem to have forgotten that incredible sense of relief and anticipation that welcomed the new Labour government in 1997. I remember very clearly how in the first few months and years the way in which ministers would be interviewed on the media was so refreshing. They were direct, confident, sympathetic and you felt they were speaking to individuals and not hectoring us like children as the previous Conservative government had.

But let's get down to what I call hearts and minds when I try to examine my feelings about the last 10 years as a Labour Party activist. Firstly I've got to accept that whether I like it or not governments are not perfect. So what sort of "end of term report" do I give to the government that so many of us wanted and needed so badly in 1997. What looms for me is the mistake of going into Iraq and that we now know that the cock-up of reconstruction after the military victory was in the hands not of Blair or Bush but in the hands of the incompetent and irresponsible Donald Rumsfeld. But that's my personal problem and it occupies my heart but what's in my mind? Well in my mind is a phenomenal series of measures that only a Labour government could have run with. Can you imagine the United Kingdom without a minimum wage? Can you imagine a United Kingdom without incredibly low mortgage rates and low inflation for 10 years? Can you imagine pensioners not being guaranteed a living minimum income by being entitled to pension credit? And so the list goes on from maternity and paternity rights, to childcare, to the massive reduction in NHS waiting times.

Of course once you've got something, you automatically take it for granted. I predict that within a year we will have forgotten the exceptional personal efforts that the Prime Minister made to bring about peace in Northern Ireland. The sight of Ian Paisley working together willingly with Martin McGuinness is very close to miraculous. And an important lesson can be learnt from this for other conflicts. As soon as you can get opponents past the posturing it appears to be downhill all the way to peace. Perhaps we can apply the same technique to Palestine/Israel, Iraq, Congo and Sudan and bring about a very very different world. On the human rights front Gordon Brown and Tony Blair affected the lives of at least 20 million African children with schools, and clinics and water wells paid for by initiating debt cancellation through the G8 group of richest countries. Signing up to the Human Rights Act, the European People Trafficking Act and the United Nations Control Arms initiative means the world is moving towards the moral high ground.

So perhaps we've been spoilt, perhaps our aspirations and our expectations have been raised so high by the government that we will always be disappointed. But in the end I believe if we are honest with ourselves, we will have to accept that Tony Blair's "end of term report" for the last 10 years will be "tried hard, did well, some room for improvement".
Inset, Tony Blair with Jack Cunningham and John Wilson at Westlakes.

Alan Alexander