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When it comes to politics I’m a rather cynical bastard. Like everyone else I have seen politicians spin and squirm, and some outright lie. But isn’t politics so important that it has to be taken seriously?

Isn’t politics so crucial to everything that we do (and to our security) that we must put our neck out, and put our faith in those who promise us change? If we don’t, are we not doomed to suffer at the mercy of those who pander to our inherent prejudices? I believe that if we stop believing that politics can make a positive difference, we will have given up as a society, relinquishing our future to the politics of hate.

I know that sounds like pompous bollocks, but it’s true.

Conservatives want us to give up on progressiveness. They want us to believe that injustice and inequality are unavoidable in our free society and that the status quo is infinitively preferable to change. This is untrue.

The great progressive leaps have occurred in spite of conservative opposition. The end of serfdom, the abolition of the Slave trade, female suffrage, the Race Relations Act, and the welfare state were all created in spite of opposition from the right. I don’t specifically mean The Conservative Party, because some liberal ideas have been so forceful that the Tories have had to acquiesce even when in power, but on the whole, conservatives have always opposed equality (even their Thatcherite support of meritocracy is a joke in practice).

But after 10 years of Labour Government it’s easy to understand why people are jaded by Blair’s brand of progressiveness. While so much good work has been done, it is ministerial incompetence and alleged sleaze that animates the media, not quiet improvement. At this point it’s worth remembering that the bulk of the print media are conservative in nature, antipathetic towards social democratic politics, and explicitly intolerant.

This blog has itself commented on both Labour’s alleged sleaze and its ineffectiveness. Indeed, for all the significant and just social changes that have occurred since 1997, it is the often-gross mismanagement of public services and the apparent sleaze, which threatens to undo this government and give political opportunity to the right. Any future Labour administration will be defined only by delivery and reform. The art of spin is exhausted.

If, as seems likely, Brown does become the next Prime Minister, it is essential that he make wholesale changes to Blair’s ministerial line up. Key departments, including Health and the Home Office, are in general disarray.

At the NHS, vast injections of cash have failed to result in major improvements because reform has stuttered. This is not to say there hasn’t been improvements, because waiting times for many crucial operations have been reduced (even taking into account statistical slight-of-hand), but few would argue that the NHS is in – pardon the term – the best of health.

Likewise, while good work has been done to reform the asylum system, the Home Office has consistently suffered from a top-level governmental proclivity to pander to the right wing press. Blair’s obsessions with the headline in The Daily Mail, not-to-mention his cushy little relationship with the Murdoch press, have drastically restricted his freedom to adopt proven and effective crime and punishment solutions from the continent.

As progressive governments in Scandinavia and across Northern Europe prove, progressive and liberal solutions can deliver, and if well managed, consistently prove to be cost-effective in the long-term.

Why has a supposedly progressive government allowed itself to be hamstrung in this way?

The answer is that New Labour has failed to be radical enough. No one can doubt the immense energy that Blair’s party possessed ten-years ago, but over time it has been blunted, both by an unpopular war, and by a fear of the very media it was so desperate to court. Blair’s Labour believes that the message is more important than the facts on the ground.

As Gordon Brown prepares to take the highest elected office in the land, the warning signs are not good. Already the ‘Iron Chancellor’ has aligned himself too closely to Rupert Murdoch’s media machine. Already News International’s influence is casting a shadow over the future cabinet. Evidence suggests that Brown will prove to be no more imaginative or braver than Blair has been. Which is why this blog struggles to endorse Brown wholeheartedly.

If this country is to have a genuinely robust political system, then it must offer real choice. Only a no good a system regurgitates vacuous rent-a-clones like David Cameron, who mimic the ideologically moribund politics of Blair. What the country needs is a legitimate progressive choice that is supported by talent and industry. Maybe a David Miliband led government could offer the electorate this? I certainly have my anxieties about a Brown one.