New Year, old New Labour tune?

Analysis
By Brian Wheeler
BBC News, political reporter

Tony Blair is expected to leave office this year

Tony Blair's tenth - and final - New Year message as prime minister has a surprising amount in common with his first.

The world may have changed in many ways since 1997, but Mr Blair's political obsessions remain reassuringly familiar - as does his taste in holidays.

In 1997, the Blairs spent new year in the Seychelles as a guest of billionaire Richard Branson.

In that year's message Mr Blair fired a warning shot to left wing Labour MPs unhappy at plans to cut benefits for lone parents, emphasising the need for "hard, work, discipline and determination" in the year ahead.

Ten years on and it is still Labour's left that seems to be on Mr Blair's mind, as he contemplates his political legacy while holidaying in a Bee Gee's home in Florida.

He certainly seems to have few worries about a future Conservative government wiping the Blair era from history.

Cameron

"New Labour set a new political course for our nation. Others now have to develop variations on our basic theme," Mr Blair writes.

"It is a measure of how much has changed that no party which wants to be in government now questions the existence of the National Health Service funded by us all and free at the point of use or the need for a national minimum wage. This is the new settlement in British politics."

Mr Blair will no doubt see Conservative leader David Cameron's claim this week that he wants his party, rather than Labour, to be seen as the friend of the working man as a sign of how much the terms of the debate have changed.

I believe in 2007, we have shown a country can be prosperous and compassionate Tony Blair In full: Blair message

But Mr Cameron's adoption of "social justice" as a core concern also points up the lingering sense of unfinished business clinging to the Blair project - something the prime minister acknowledges in his new year message.

Labour has achieved much of what it set out to do in 1997, writes Mr Blair. Crime is down, hospital waiting lists have been cut and many families have been lifted out of poverty.

But too many families are still being "left behind", the NHS is still in need of major reform and "too many school children still fail".

'Take heart'

In his 1997 message, Mr Blair could attempt to buy off critics with the promise of "a new Britain, confident, united, vibrant, respected in the world".

In 2007 the tone is more muted.

"It is a difficult time for the government," Mr Blair concedes.

He urges the party to "take heart" because it is "dominating the battle of ideas".

But he adds, in a warning to the left - or anyone else who might be tempted to see the arrival of Gordon Brown as heralding a return to old-style socialist values - "it will continue to do so provided it continues to be New Labour".

This passage has been interpreted in some quarters as a sign of division between Mr Blair and Mr Brown over the future direction of the party.

'Deepen' reforms

Mr Blair's policy review launched at the end of last year could certainly be seen as an attempt to make Blair's reforms Brown-proof.

The prime minister boasts that the review will not only cover "every area of policy," for the next 10 years but "identify those areas where we need to go further and faster as well as those problems which simply did not register back in 1997".

These include "the need to secure long term energy supplies, the challenge and opportunities thrown up by the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies or advances in genetics".

He also speaks about the need to "deepen the reform in the NHS and schools" and the need to tackle "the threat of global terrorism which menaces us all".

But, as Mr Blair points out, it is not just about policy.

And there is a nagging sense in this New Year's message that Mr Blair fears that without him around to keep the New Labour flame alive the party may swing back towards the left.