LONDON - Exactly two years ago, the British cabinet gathered at Chequers for a strategy session ahead of the Labour Party conference. The mood was upbeat; Labour enjoyed a commanding lead in the polls and was in a strong position, according to a presentation by Philip Gould, Prime Minister Tony Blair's polling guru.
There was, however, a tiny cloud on the horizon in Gould's otherwise glowing report. For the first time, voters were using the word "arrogant" to describe Blair and his Government.
"It was only a blip on the edge of the radar screen," one cabinet minister recalled this week. "With hindsight, we should have paid more attention to it. We should have nipped it in the bud."
As Downing St holds an inquest into the fuel crisis and the string of other problems that have suddenly enveloped the Government, a dangerous common thread is emerging.
"The voters think we have stopped listening and caring about their concerns," one Blair ally admitted. "It's time to show we are in listening mode."
A similar message was delivered to Labour MPs in their constituencies last weekend. One emerged from a surgery at which he met road hauliers, farmers and pensioners to say: "It's not about petrol prices. They just think we've stopped listening to them and are out of touch."
Such feedback is taken seriously in the Blair camp. If left unchecked, such alienation of the public would arguably pose a much more potent threat than anger about rising fuel prices.
Sometimes, Blair feels he cannot win: when he consulted and listened, he was accused of indecision and trying to be "all things to all men" and pandering to public opinion. When he tries to act as a strong leader - as he did in the fuel crisis - he is accused of arrogance.
Whatever the causes, there is no doubt that the Government is in its deepest hole since it came to power.
In isolation, allegations this week that Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown lied during a row over Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone's £1 million ($3.37 million) donation to Labour might have been easily shrugged off. But, as one minister admitted: "There is a danger of a drip, drip effect."
Downing St insisted that the questions over the Ecclestone affair were all raised and answered three years ago.
But even if the renewed storm blows over, other clouds are hovering as Blair prepares for an unexpectedly tricky party conference in Brighton next week.
The Millennium Dome has become a running sore for the British Government, with an almost daily diet of damaging revelations about its financial problems. This crisis is worryingly close to home for Blair. It was very much his personal will which forced the decision to go ahead with the dome through an a reluctant cabinet.
Blair's other problems stem from the publication of unwanted books about the Government. A biography of Mo Mowlam, the most popular member of the cabinet, revealed how she had been sidelined by Blair and speculation about her future prompted her announcement that she would leave politics at the next general election.
The book causing the most headaches in Number 10 is Servants of the People by the political commentator Andrew Rawnsley. As well as reviving the Ecclestone controversy, Rawnsley has shone an unwelcome spotlight on the Blair-Brown relationship.
Although Downing St has dismissed the book as "tittle-tattle," some ministers admit privately that the sections about their sometimes strained relations ring true.
Frank Field, a former Labour minister, warned that the Government's troubles could haunt it in the way that sleaze bedevilled former Conservative Prime Minister John Major's Administration.
"The worry must be ... that in the next Parliament we might have so created an image of ourselves, that it will be difficult to dislodge that image from the public mind."
- INDEPENDENT
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