“When this election of yours is over,” a Norwegian university professor has just written to me, “I hope your paper will broaden its mind a bit again … okay, of course politics matters, but it sure matters less than your current coverage indicates. Write more about gene technology, the Internet and other processes that will change the way we live Tony Blair won’t. All right: he will, a little.”

It is always good to see ourselves as others see us, but I am particularly grateful to the Norwegian professor for pointing out the limits of politics at this particular time. There is such an expectation of change, and such a element of (albeit understandable) glee among Labour supporters that we need people to remind us that the election of Tony Blair will only change our lives a little.
How much depends on the extent to which he, and the people round about him, understand these big forces for change, and then whether they shape their policies to channel and use them, or resist and challenge them.

Do you lean with the wind, or do you spit into it? Try this test. Let’s list five of these forces, the processes that will change the way we live, and see to what extent New Labour’s ideas do dovetail with them.Start with the rising power of global finance. That power has been climbing for the best part of two decades, so New Labour has had plenty of time to come to terms with it, but Gordon Brown managed to take the markets by surprise yesterday by pushing ahead more quickly than they had expected with the plan to give the Bank of England freedom to set interest rates. This is simply taking further a series of reforms started by the previous Government, and merely brings the Bank to about the middle of the independence league rather than being a bit below it So we are catching up rather than pushing ahead. Nevertheless, it is a clear sign that politics are going with the flow of economics.

Score: Plus.Next, take the changes taking place in the world labour market: greater competition from workers abroad, the shift towards self-employment, part- time working, job growth in smaller companies and so on. Here, the new policy is the application of the European social chapter. The changes in the labour market have undoubtedly created great social tensions, in particular the conflict between the insiders – people who have good jobs and want to keep them, and the outsiders – people who are unemployed, or underemployed and would like to do better.The problem here is that the Government is adopting an old-fashioned social model, one invented the best part of a decade ago in a quite different economic environment, and one which has subsequently been discredited as increasing the gap between insiders and outsiders. The practical reality may be that the new Government had no option but to sign up, and it may well be that it will start to develop a more appropriate model in the coming years. But so far, the score is for a minus.Number three is demography, the ageing of the developed world.