Tony Blair’s valedictory remarks at this year’s conference were a sobering reminder of the wisdom of Heraclitus: ‘the only constant in life is change.’ Since 1997 change there has undoubtedly been, much – if not most – of it for the better. As a country we have had our ups and downs: public investment up, police numbers up, school standards up, unemployment down, crime rates down, inflation rates and mortgage rates down. Yet as we begin to contemplate life after Tony, as we near the 10th anniversary of Labour gaining office, the impatience for further change and improvement (particularly among Labour voters and party members) is about to reach fever pitch.

A renewed party needs to reflect the aspirations of ordinary people but it also needs to be realistic about the challenges that lie ahead. When I attend my local Labour party branch meetings I sometimes hear members berating ‘Blair’ for being all talk, often they ask what on earth has happened to the party of Nye Bevan? Of course the answer is: it gained office. Newly appointed ministers (and prime ministers) who had spent most of their adult lives evangelising about the need for collaboration not competition, of the hand-up not the handout, discovered on gaining office that the state was (and I apologise for using the phrase) ‘not fit for purpose’.

The problem for members and ministers alike is that we did not fully comprehend just how long it was going to take to deliver substantial and lasting change. Newly-appointed ministers in Blair’s first government were horrified at the enormity of the task that lay before them. They inherited a public sector that had been abandoned by the Tories. A public sector that, both philosophically and pragmatically, the Tories did not believe in. They (Tory ministers and MPs) did not use the NHS, sent their children to private schools and the closest they came to public transport was when they got into a London taxi.

The reality is (talk to any doctor, nurse, police officer or teacher) that the extra funding for health, education and the police have made significant differences. Our great cities are being transformed via one of the biggest urban renewal programmes ever seen in Britain. The difficulty has not been in securing the necessary investment, it has been in securing the reforms that need to go with it.

The forces of conservatism are so deeply embedded in our public services we should not be surprised that changing the culture of our hospitals and schools is going to be bloody. We soon forget that the public sector had experienced massive, near-fatal under-investment for the 18 years of Tory rule in the 1980s and 1990s, but the other problem was that these public services, education and health in particular, operated a two-tier system with huge variations in the quality of service provided between one school and another or one hospital and another. Public services were, and to some extent remain, deeply unequal as league and performance tables in the NHS and schools illustrate. The ‘best’ schools were either private or in affluent areas; access to the best healthcare could be bought; the highest crime areas were in the lowest-income neighbourhoods; and public transport was most deficient in serving the most deprived housing estates.

The affluent and well educated, meanwhile, had the choice to buy their way out of failing or inadequate provision – a situation the Tories ‘opting out’ reforms of the 1980s encouraged. To be fair, there have been some notable improvements since 1997. In England and Wales the number of heart operations each year has risen by over 30 per cent since 1997 – no patient is now waiting more than nine months for heart surgery. Over 98 per cent of patients referred by their GP with suspected cancer are now seen within two weeks, while 96 per cent of patients receive their treatment within a month’s diagnosis of breast cancer.

In schools, we have the best primary tests, GCSE and A-Level results ever. Almost no infants are now in class sizes of more than 30 and 9,000 schools have new classrooms and facilities. More than 800 failing schools in England have been removed from special measures and turned around.

This is good stuff and the public wants to see more. The reality, however, is that the improvements we have necessarily seen in the past few years are quick-fix and easy-win in nature. Real, transformational and long lasting change will take much longer. The battle (and it is a battle) to transform our public services is not yet won. Public services in Britain are in the process of being revived but there are still many (of whom a significant number are on the left) who wish not revival but reversal.

In his speech Blair, partly, staked this government’s reputation on delivering further improvement in our public services; a Brown-led government would be wise to review this decision. Not because it is the wrong direction in which to proceed, but because it is a four, possibly five-term objective.

If Alistair Campbell had ever needed to ‘sex-up’ anything it would be the message that as a result of the consolidation of 10 years of initiatives, the day-to-day treadmill of government is having a radical impact on the lives of ordinary people, particularly those in the lower income bracket. Too often some Labour supporters and members accuse those in office of lacking a radical vision for our nation, of having achieved nothing in government because it hasn’t done everything. This is nonsense.

Blair was and is a radical reformer and the outcomes of this radicalism are to be found in the ordinary, in the mundane daily miracles that are taking place in our schools, our hospitals and our local communities. It is a radicalism that Labour members can be proud of and it is a radicalism that is beginning, slowly, to change this country for the better. If we are to make the most of this then we need to secure a fourth term at least.