Labour Party Manifesto, 1997
1997 Labour Manifesto One paragraph is titled: Zero tolerance of underperformance!!!!
Blair suffers angry revolt on benefits - 11/12/97
Blair offers olive branch to MPs in benefit rebellion - 18/12/97
Clash over grammar schools - 07/07/99 William Hague has accused Labour of lying when it made an election pledge not to close grammar schools
Hague attacks 'Labour hypocrites' - 07/10/99 accusing the prime minister of lying and breaking his promises
Labour suffers second welfare rebellion - 03/11/99
NHS cash crisis warning - 12/11/99
Blair prepared for EU isolation - 10/12/99
Health policy under fire - 15/01/00
Blair: Health reform needs time - 16/01/00
'No rise' in minimum wage - 30/01/00
Labour accused of museum U-turn - 08/02/00
Troubles ahead over minimum wage - 15/02/00
Taxes are higher, admits Downing St - 15/03/00
Smith reneges on pledge for free museums - 30/03/00
Budget leaves one in three voters feeling worse off - 01/04/00
Government failing the poor, says Kirk - 11/05/00
Ex-minister warns Blair - 11/05/00
Tories see No 10 note as threat to impartiality of Civil Service - 15/05/00
Blair scraps idea of new rural affairs ministry - 22/05/00
The forces of desperation - 29/05/00
Bleasdale and Kilfoyle give Labour hard time - 04/06/00
Brown's hotline for tax dodgers does not exist - 07/06/00
Hague attacks PM's 'empty promises' - 09/06/00
Officials drew up plans for NHS cuts cover-up - 29/06/00
Labour fails to bridge the class divide - 29/06/00 MORI poll shows Britain remains as class-ridden as ever, in spite of Prime Minister's claims
Blair plans concessions to head off party revolt - 30/06/00 Prime Minister ready to make offer to party trade unions and Labour activists over pensions and mininum wage
Urban renewal chief demands swift action - 30/06/00 Lord Rogers of Riverside to launch attack on Government's failure to implement his master plan
Tories attack Labour's underspending - 01/07/00
Breast cancer target fiasco - 02/07/00 leading surgeons blamed the Government target for placing family doctors under impossible strain
Police forces cut jobs as pension bill hits £1bn - 09/07/00 Numbers slashed as forces struggle to meet £1 billion yearly commitments
What did the leaked memo say? - 19/07/00 Pollster Philip Gould's memo - Getting the Right Place in History and not the Wrong One: "We are outflanked on patriotism and crime; we are suffering from disconnection; we have been assailed for spin and broken promises..."
Promise keepers? - 14/07/00 In fact, there have been few targets in any areas which clearly show whether government money has been spent wisely
Hague: NHS Plan 'admission of failure' - 27/07/00 During the 1997 election campaign, Labour pledged to cut waiting lists by at least 100,000... but now, waiting lists to see consultants are up by 154,000
Hospital waiting list jumps by 43,000 - 08/08/00
Labour 'enticing NHS to go private' - 11/08/00
Government 'failing Britain's poorest' - 15/08/00
'Red Oskar' lashes out at New Labour's platitudes and broken promises - 21/08/00 Oskar Lafontaine, the former German finance minister, has launched a scathing attack on Tony Blair and New Labour
North-south divide 'getting bigger' - 21/08/00 as denied by Tony Blair on 05/12/00
NHS queue lengthens under Labour - 30/08/00 Scotland
Blunkett is accused of school budgets U-turn - 20/09/00 Head teachers claim Education Secretary broke promise to guarantee them full control of school budgets
Prescott attacked for backpedalling on cycling target - 21/09/00
Labour poverty targets missed - 22/09/00
Blair broke pledges, says 'green guru' - 16/10/00 Jonathon Porritt
'I am now the system, whether I like it or not' - 16/10/00 Jonathon Porritt
Labour attacked on environment - 16/10/00
Report shows Labour's anti-poverty policies are not working - 11/12/00 Youth unemployment has increased and drug use for 15 to 24-year-olds has "risen rapidly"
Four year wait for hospital appointment - 11/01/01
Waiting lists cut again - 11/01/01 However, the waiting list to see a consultant for a first appointment - the so-called waiting list for the waiting list - has
increased sharply
Labour short on two 'early pledges' - 10/01/01 key promises on crime and education have still to be met
Labour pledge failure defended - 12/01/01
Your reforms have let us down, voters tell Blair - 14/01/01
Public's doubts grow over Labour record - 14/01/01
'I disagree with private education, but . . .' - 14/01/01 parents and teachers are increasingly exasperated with Labour's stewardship of state education
'A lot of these schemes are gimmicks' - 14/01/01 Jack Straw promised to reduce the time taken to deal with young offenders from 142 to 71 days... he has not kept his promise
The patients: 'We have no faith in the NHS here' - 14/01/01 'Mr Blair has let us down'
Gordon Brown raids the Tory charity box - 14/01/01
Branson attacks Labour 'mistakes' - 21/01/01
Rich-poor gap widening - 25/01/01 the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer
Brown attacked over Churches' VAT setback - 05/02/01
'Blair's red tape hurting British firms' - 16/02/01 Blair has been accused by an Forbes Global, American business magazine, of failing to live up to his promise of a "pro-business" agenda
Ministers take royal flight out of traffic chaos - 18/02/01 Ministry of defence figures show Labour using Queen's jets more than twice as often as Tory predecessors... When Blair took office he warned Labour MPs that they were "not here to enjoy the trappings of power but to do a job and uphold the highest standards in public life"
Woodhead: "Blair and Blunkett have not delivered. The children have been betrayed" - 01/03/01
Hospitals have 'got worse under Blair' - 11/04/01 Two thirds of Londoners think that hospital services have got worse under Labour
NHS cure for waiting lists fails to add up - 12/04/01
I had to confront Blair with the truth, says shop owner - 13/04/01 He said he would get back to me in 24 hours but I am still waiting
Women waiting in pain doubles under Labour - 16/04/01 While there were 8,776 women waiting more than 13 weeks for their first consultant appointment with a gynaecologist in 1997, the number had increased to 16,528 by the end of last year
Blair broke his promise, restaurant owner says - 16/04/01
Labour 'puts women's jobs at risk' - 17/04/01
More families draw welfare - 17/04/01 figures released last night cast doubt on Tony Blair's pledge to rein in the welfare state
Poor getting poorer under Blair, says Portillo - 18/04/01
Huge class size 'unnecessary' - 24/04/01 a primary school in Norfolk has been forced to have a class of 94 pupils
No more taxes - apart from 45 'stealth rises' - 26/04/01
Labour 'failing' on health as 2m wait to see consultants - 29/04/01
Promises cost them nothing - for now - 29/04/01
Labour taxes are 'costing an extra two weeks' pay' - 30/04/01
Four years of broken promises - 01/05/01
Labour's broken promises - 01/05/01
Four years on, and things can still only get better - 04/05/01
Britain leads the world on risk of being assaulted - 04/05/01 tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime?
Blair's NHS pledge 'to fall billions short' - 06/05/01 "The Government has got itself into a muddle over targets for health care spending"
Pledge card tones down the promises - 10/05/01 The Government has not met two of the so-called five "early pledges" of 1997
Cook forced to admit failure in two key election pledges - 11/05/01 He faced further criticism when he unveiled a Scottish version of the pledge cards without a single new promise
Patients on six-year waiting list for hip operations, claim doctors - 15/05/01
Blair is irritated as pledge over sleaze comes back to haunt him - 15/05/01 Much to Mr Blair's obvious irritation, half the 20-minute "Today" interview was taken up with questions about whether he had fulfilled his promise to lead a Government that would be "purer than pure" (he hadn't)
Police face big pay and pensions shake-up - 16/05/01 The Government is anxious to avoid a damaging backlash from rank-and-file policemen before polling day on June 7
Officers warn of looming crisis on police numbers - 16/05/01 the "last-minute hiring frenzy" being pushed through by the Government was overwhelming the training system, with £18,000-a-year recruits doing clerical work while waiting to get on to training courses
PM gets tongue-lashing on wards - 17/05/01 Sharon Storer upstaged a pre-planned photo call with patients with an onslaught on the lack of resources at the hospital
Will Labour get more radical? - 17/05/01 The big pledge in 1997 was to cut class sizes for five to seven year olds. This time there are no specific targets for reducing class sizes
Neighbours reject Blair in his own constituency - 20/05/01 many are saying that they will not be voting Labour for the first time in their lives
Top head attacks Blair 'false dawn' - 22/05/01 head teachers are "overburdened with bureaucracy" and teachers are demoralised
Labour dashed our education hopes, says head - 22/05/01 "The whole of the nation's schools are being treated as if they were in the bottom 10%"
Kennedy blasts Labour - 24/05/01 the British people had voted for a change of policy in 1997, but had just got "a change of party"
Tories allege schools failure - 25/05/01
Pupils 'lack access to textbooks' - 27/05/01 There are no textbooks available for homework for 76% of pupils in both English and history, 75% in science and 81% in geography
Blair faces angry voters - 30/05/01 A mother whose daughter is waiting for a bone marrow transplant challenged Prime Minister Tony Blair to do more to help.. "No, Mr Blair it's just not good enough"
School and health chiefs attack Blair - 01/06/01 As he promised a "crusade" to improve education and health, teachers and doctors' leaders said he had presided over third world standards that brought shame on the country
Blair let us down, say parents of dying child who had tea at No 10 - 01/06/01
What the parties promise on education - 01/06/01 shortly before the last election, Tony Blair was quoted as saying: "Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education." In fact, tuition fees were introduced in England and Wales in 1998 and are now set at £1,050
What the parties promise on health - 01/06/01 Labour froze health spending for two years when it came to power and is now struggling to tackle the on-going crisis in the NHS
GP vote sparks poll row - 01/06/01 they are threatening to quit the service unless they are given improved contracts
Analysis: You're not safe with Labour - 06/06/01 Except for some improvement at primary level, schools are no better under Labour. The NHS, its pride and joy, is actually worse
Blair is attacked over retreat on pub hours - 20/06/01
Labour must deliver, says Hague - 20/06/01
Labour has failed to close poverty gap, figures show - 14/07/01
Blair defends missing annual report - 18/07/01 The first annual report was called So What Do You Think, the second So What Are We Doing. This year's seems to be called So Where Is It?
Patients put at risk to meet targets - 26/07/01 ...fiddled figures, multiple waiting lists, distorted clinical priorities and sicker patients waiting longer
Waiting to be told the truth - 26/07/01 now is not a good time to be seriously ill
Ministers blamed for NHS failings - 26/07/01 patients with serious illnesses have had their operations delayed in favour of less urgent cases so that hospitals can meet government waiting lists
'Bunions put ahead of hip ops' - 26/07/01 National Audit Office confirms what consultants and patients have known for a very long time
Ministers savaged over waiting lists - 26/07/01
Minister's hurry over waiting lists - 26/07/01 clinical priorities were regularly distorted to meet the government's targets
Labour accused of sports fields hypocrisy - 12/08/01 Schools are currently selling off land equivalent to a football pitch every week, despite government pledges to end the scandal of Britain's vanishing playing fields
Improving schools and hospitals will require 4p tax rise, Blair told - 13/08/01
Blair's big university pledge fails the poor - 19/08/01 Thousands of places left unfilled - Working class students lose out
Susan Deacon is accused of U-turn on waiting lists - 31/08/01 she has abandoned waiting lists as the main performance measure for the National Health Service, deserting a pledge to reduce waiting lists to 75,000 by 2003 because the government was incapable of keeping the promise
I was wrong on teachers, says minister - 02/09/01 Stephen Timms, who provoked fury in July by claiming that "schools would have all the teachers they required by September" has admitted that he was wrong
William Hague: I sounded the alarm about asylum seekers months ago - 07/09/01 In the weeks before the election, Tony Blair was adamant that Britain's immigration procedures were coping with the volume of asylum seekers arriving at our shores, and that the situation was getting better by the day. The truth emerges that the asylum system is actually close to collapse
Blair 'won't hand over to Brown' - 09/09/01
Minister for pensions is barracked - 02/10/01 Ian McCartney denied being a weasel: "I come from the trade union movement"
Tories to home in on public services - 10/10/01 Michael Howard is angry that in his Kent constituency there are now 269 heart patients waiting more than 13 weeks to see a cardiologist compared with 40 when the Tories lost power in 1997
'Burnt out' GPs 'want to quit' - 17/10/01 a quarter of family doctors are planning to leave general practice in the next five years. Remember "24 hours to save the NHS?" Two thirds of GPs say their morale is lower than it was five years ago
Tories attack Brown's broken promises - 27/11/01
Aboard the ship of fools - 11/12/01 many MPs thought that Labour was the party of the workers
Labour breaks promise by chasing rural firms for tax - 02/12/01
'Shame' of NHS dental provision - 03/01/02 The prime minister promised in 1999 that everyone would be able to see an NHS dentist within two years
Don't blame us for poor service, says Blunkett - 02/02/02 after 5 years of Labour!
Labour is failing to get women in power - 15/02/02
UK near bottom of heart op table - 17/02/02 Only Greece and Hungary offer worse provision
500,000 'denied operations through NHS bed-blocking' - 20/02/01 The equivalent of 6,000 years of hospital time - enough to treat half of all patients on NHS waiting lists - have been lost since May 1997
'We will put up taxes to pay for NHS' - 21/02/02
Taxes 'must rise' to improve NHS - 21/02/02
Pensions pledge is abandoned - 07/03/02
Blair woos public service workers - 07/03/02 while preparing to renege on promises to improve workers' rights!
Unions concerned over breach of pensions promise - 08/03/02
Labour leader 'has become a liability' - 08/03/02 allegations of corruption are combining with a failure to deliver
Another rise in hospital waiting lists - 09/03/02
Taxes must rise to pay for NHS, warns Brown - 21/03/02
We don't get our money's worth from Gordon Brown - 21/03/02 Tax has rocketed under this Government, from 35 to 37.4 per cent of GDP
750 jobs to go as Labour breaks dockyard pledge - 26/03/02
Blair at bay over jobs and rail pay-back - 26/03/02 Byers is ready to pay £300 million to Railtrack shareholders despite his repeated assertions that taxpayers' money would not be used to bail out the collapsed company
Labour 'failing to meet public service targets' - 30/03/02
NHS 'is failing to reduce waiting times' - 30/03/02
Treasury blocks Blair's student loans pledge - 04/04/02
Labour 'struggles to beat child poverty' - 11/04/02 At last year's general election Gordon Brown claimed Labour had lifted 1.2 million children out of poverty. But the real figure might be nearer half a million
It is the poor who pay for Labour's tax policy - 14/04/02
Leaked memo reveals Labour Party exodus - 14/04/02 Membership has slumped from more than 400,000 before the election victory in 1997 to only 280,000 today
'Labour membership fight gets personal' - 14/04/02
Labour 'failing' on Green issues - 14/04/02
Women feel worse off under Labour - 15/04/02 six out of 10 believing they are worse off today than when Tony Blair came to power
Tories attack Blair's 'tax and spend failure' - 16/04/02 Labour have been talking about reform since 1998 and it never happens
Budget 'breaks tax promise' - 17/04/02
An unhealthy Budget - 18/04/02 the Chancellor broke Labour's pledge not to raise income tax just a year after the Prime Minister had repeated it at the last election
Tom Utley: Blair and Brown lied to me - and I want my money back - 20/04/02 In their manifesto they promised not to raise Income Tax. So they increased tax on income instead!
Public 'in pessimistic mood' with Labour - 14/05/02 A sizeable bloc of Labour voters grows disappointed with Labour
I didn't hoodwink voters on tax, Blair tells Paxman - 15/05/02
We only tinkered, admits Mandelson - 17/05/02 Labour has made little difference to the lives of the poor
Smith: Dedicated master of detail - 30/05/02 "Our air is not for sale"
Stop panicking and start delivering, Prime Minister - 16/06/02
Hospices forced to close beds as £50m Government aid is delayed - 17/06/02 Extra money promised by the Government to help hard-up hospices care for dying people will not be fully available until 2004, the Department of Health has admitted
Government under fire over NHS - 17/06/02 fewer GP practices are meeting a Government target of offering patients an appointment within 48 hours
CBI and union inflict double blow on Blair - 26/06/02 Before the 1997 election, Mr Blair deliberately sought to win the approval of big business
Fiasco over Railtrack costs £21bn - 28/06/02 They said they would not give a blank cheque, but that is exactly what they are doing
Government 'will not meet GP targets' - 09/07/02
The middle classes have had their fill of Gordon Brown - 10/07/02 we see that he is, after all, just another Labour Chancellor
Blair warns ministers over public services - 16/07/02 He conceded that money has only been reaching frontline service for the past couple of years
Labour spending reforms 'fail' - 21/07/02 Labour has broken nearly half of its promises to reform the way the public sector delivers services
Labour waiting list claims denounced - 10/08/02 in-patient waiting list up by 17,000; more than 20,000 have been waiting more than a year
Prescott attacked over Labour's green record - 15/08/02
Asylum removal target abandoned - 30/08/02
Weller keeps his cutting edge - 06/09/02 We waited 18 years to get a Labour party in, and it was the first time I've never voted because I'm just sick of all of them
2 in 3 voters lose faith in Blair reform - 30/09/02
Disenchantment sets in as New Labour fails to deliver the goods - 30/09/02
Revellers given a glimpse of Blair-land - 30/09/02 "the party leadership isn't aware of what the reality is on the ground politically"
Broken-down Britain is sunk in gloom, says poll - 25/11/02 53 per cent agree with foreign media reports that "nothing in Britain works"
Brown 'on course to miss half Government targets' - 27/11/02 for example a Home Office target to cut robberies, which are actually up 44pc in the major cities
Poverty 'unchanged' under Labour - 12/12/02
Mistaken identity - 16/12/02 New Labour came to power on the back of Tony Blair's ingenious line about being "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", yet it has done very little about the latter, and nothing about the former
Public has zero tolerance of Blair on crime - 11/01/03 voters are unhappy with the Government's record after more than five years in office
Blair fails to convince public that he is tough on crime - 11/01/03
Duncan Smith targets Blair record - 13/01/03 accusing him of being responsible for failing the nation on crime, health and education
Ministers back down on asylum pledge - 10/02/03
Asylum and crime targets missed - 14/02/03
Is Brown losing business? - 20/05/03 CBI warns that Labour has failed to deliver on its promises of radical public sector reform
Tories portray Blair as the Pinocchio of politics - 07/07/03

Rural residents face £20m bill for street 'wardens' - 03/08/03 The Government has decided to axe funding for the Street Warden initiative, which was launched nationally in 2001 by Tony Blair as a way of reducing vandalism and petty crime
Glaswegians 'live shorter lives' - 22/08/03 SNP: "after six full years in power in Westminster and four years in the Scottish Parliament, Labour has completely failed to tackle the underlying problems of poverty and deprivation which lead to low life expectancy"
Government must 'change or die' - 21/09/03 Labour will not win a third term if it does not win back the trust of the voters, David Blunkett has warned
UK business climate 'worsening' - 17/11/03 The CBI said its "deeply worrying" poll laid the blame on the Labour government, for not delivering on promises to create a favourable legislative environment
Voters 'despairing' of New Labour - 26/11/03
Blair: "we are not giving up the power to set our asylum laws" - 15/12/03 Hansard. See Column 1334
A blissful New Year - without Labour - 01/01/04
How we got to this point - 27/01/04 Labour's 2001 election manifesto said: "We will not introduce 'top-up' fees
Bad neighbours U-turn 'buried' - 28/01/04
Ocean estate: New deal or old problems? - 17/02/04
Blair plans to ditch Sir Humphrey - 24/02/04 Who is to blame for Labour's complete failure to delivery on any of their promises? The Civil Service of course!
Hain says Labour ignores members - 10/03/04
Express switches after Euro shift - 21/04/04
Voters 'let down by Labour' - 27/04/04
Blair broke vow to dying officer, widow says - 20/07/04 Mr Blair had given him a personal assurance seven years ago that a public investigation would be held if he became Prime Minister - but as always he reneged
Blair 'broke IRA pledges' - 02/09/04
20,700 pupils in oversize classes - 30/09/04
Blair's asylum switch gives Europe the key to Britain - 26/01/05 while promising that Britain would keep control of immigration, Labour secretly handed control to the EU
Dead man not found for six years - 05/04/05 A 63-year-old man's body lay undiscovered in his council flat for nearly six years, an inquest was told
Targets can kill - 10/04/05 In the 1997 election, Mr Blair used to boast that only his party could "save the NHS". His party is now despoiling it
Jessica, 20, tells Blair how she lost faith in him - 21/04/05
Majority believes that Blair has failed over crime - 24/04/05 Most voters believe that Tony Blair has broken the promise for which he was best known before he took office - to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"
Water firms missing leak targets - 14/07/05 During the 1997 General Election campaign, Labour took every opportunity to blame the Tories for hosepipe bans. Whose fault is it after 8 years of Labour?
Dirty hospitals to escape charges - 15/07/05 Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt had originally said in May that failing hospitals could face prosecution
Record immigration levels to UK - 20/10/05 net immigration levels are now five times what they were when Labour took power
UK prepared to reduce EU rebate - 01/12/05 What Blair said in June: "The UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away. Period."
Blair isolated as Poland and France reject EU deal - 15/12/05 a key promise Blair made before the 1997 election was that he would not be isolated in Europe
Science money pledge 'broken' - 10/03/06
Blair laughs off 'traitor' claims - 16/03/06
A pretty crooked kind of guy… - 19/03/06 Blair's failure to keep the promise he made to be "whiter than white" once he was in office has fatally discredited him
Schools spending 'slowing down' - 24/03/06
Blair admits resignation mistake - 26/03/06 is he trying to get us used to the idea that he won't resign after all?
Blair's legacy: the rhetoric and the facts - 31/03/0-6
Cruddas doubts things are better - 27/09/06
Blair's pledge on single-sex treatment in ruins - 24/11/06
Brown's nine years have been littered with empty promises, say the Tories - 02/12/06
Britain is slowest to pay out tsunami aid - 23/12/06
Labour loses one member every 20 minutes - 27/12/06
Reid has reneged on pledge to sack top staff - 14/01/07
Migrant English classes cuts row - 11/01/07 Proposed cuts to English language classes for immigrants contradict the government's own policies on integration
Frontline troops are refused kit to fight Taliban - 21/01/07 four months ago Blair pledged that commanders would be supplied with whatever they needed to "get the job done"
For your sake and ours, Mr Blair – call it a day - 27/01/07 Decisions that were shirked after 1997 now come hammering at the door for resolution
Crisis exposes Blair's law and order flaws - 27/01/07 The Prime Minisiter now stands accused of being neither tough on crime nor on its causes
Community hospital 'promise' row - 07/02/07
Blair's wealth gap: voters want City bonus curb - 18/02/07 One MP, Ian Gibson, accused the Prime Minister and other senior figures of being "very sympathetic to the rich. They have their holidays with them, they are envious of them"
Blair's legacy: envy, inequity and selfishness - 18/02/07
What have the past 10 years of Blair been for? - 21/02/07
Labour accused of climate Bill chaos - 24/02/07
Labour policy 'failing our cities' - 25/02/07
Tories turn fire on promise-breaker Brown - 03/03/07
Wealth gap 'widest in 40 years' - 17/07/07 Ten years ago Labour came to power claiming that the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer under the Tories... so what happened?
Gordon Brown 'broke promise' over EU treaty - 26/07/07
Gulf between rich and poor 'widest in decades' - 08/09/07
Gordon Brown's taxes hit 20-year peak - 18/10/07 despite Gordon Brown's repeated promise to introduce a "fair tax system", the Government has increasingly hit families and companies with ever-higher taxes, from stamp duty and inheritance tax to council tax and business rates
Anger as Labour breaks HIPs vow - 16/12/07
Foreign criminals 'won't be deported' - 21/12/07
Labour dogged by pledges on mixed-sex wards - 22/12/07 More than 10 years ago, Tony Blair asked: "Is it beyond the collective wit of the Government to deal with that problem?"