The polls predict that Labour will get another kicking in this Thursday's elections. Which will be just the 10th anniversary "gift" that Blair has asked for! But since he is also due to tender his official resignation next week, Labour has been spinning like crazy over his "huge achievements" while in office.

In fact they are even telling off the British public for not recognising what a wonderful job he has done! So we are to forget his lies over Saddam's WMD, the horrendous bloodbath in Iraq and the escalating war in Afghanistan. After all, has he not made the world a safer place, improved the NHS, made "huge accomplishments" in education, put the unemployed (and disabled!) back to work - and is the economy not "booming"?

Well, we can draw our own balance sheet of these ten years, and it only takes a glance at the press in the last one week, to expose Blair's true record.

Feeding the pfi sharks

For instance, last Friday the papers reported that there were 17,000 NHS job cuts, by the government's own figures, in the last year, with part-timers bearing the brunt. However, the nurses' union said that 23,000 nursing posts alone had been cut in the past 18 months. 10,000 junior doctors cannot find jobs. So these figures just do not tally. 17 NHS Trusts are still bankrupt and cuts and closures are continuing.

But when the NHS crisis started happening 18 months ago, these cuts were all hushed up and denied - and we were reminded how much money was going into the NHS! In fact Hewitt still denies that the closures are due to funding deficits.

No wonder. The "massive funding" which has gone into the NHS, just happens to get eaten up, bit by bit, on its way to the hospitals, by thousands of private contractors who have been brought in, in order, precisely, to give them a slice of the pie! So no wonder the deficits and no wonder so many "new PFI hospitals" are just glossy shells, like Labour's other "achievements"!

It was also reported that on Mayday, civil servants will strike over the 50,000 job cuts, courtesy of Gordon Brown's "reforms". And that postal workers were threatening to strike after being told that they had to accept a pay freeze, major changes in conditions, and that another 48,000 job cuts were on the cards!

And then the Rich List on Sunday, told us that the wealthy had trebled their fortunes over the last ten years! But this year Britain also "achieved" the disgrace of having more households with children living in poverty than any other developed country in the world - and one of the biggest inequality gaps. Yes, Labour, like Robin Hood in reverse, has stolen from the poor to give to the rich.

Legitimising lies

So what on earth can there be for Blair to boast about? What does the working class have to thank Labour for, whether in terms of jobs, local services, affordable housing, pensions, or the NHS? No, it has every reason to be outraged!

But worse, this government gave itself a licence to kill - and the justification to lie about it. Only last week, during the trial of 2 civil servants who disclosed the minutes of a meeting between Blair and Bush in 2004, the jury was told that private talks between world leaders must remain secret - however "morally and legally abhorrent" they are.

This is what happens when politicians are allowed to carry out their policies behind everyone's backs and make that the "rule".

Of course it was always like this. Let us not fool ourselves. Their "democracy" is designed precisely to keep the public in the dark and without a say. That is true, whether it is about "reforming" the public sector and the legal system, filling the prisons to bursting point, or upholding the interests of BP in the Gulf by waging a disastrous and bloody war. They use pretexts like the "national interest" or "security" which, for them, justifies everything, including killing and maiming thousands and thousands of ordinary people.

Time to kick ass

That is what governments do when there is no control exercised over them - not by the opposition parties, but neither by the working class, which is, in fact, the only decisive force with the power to stop a government in its tracks. And when politicians stay in power so long, without being held to account, it becomes perfectly normal for them to legitimise outright lies.

This is Labour's 10-year balance sheet. But anyone who draws it, will find it is the balance sheet of any government which does not get its ass kicked very seriously - and not in the ballot box, but in the streets!