New Labour is now reaping what it has itself sown: a cumulative weakening of the values of social solidarity, public service and altruism, which provide the invisible bedrock on which the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party ultimately depend.

From Peter Mandelson's celebration of the 'filthy rich' and Tony Blair's contempt for public sector workers, through to Gordon Brown’s present refusal properly to reward public servants and his insistence that 'public service reform' means contracting out these services to private business, self-seeking individualism has been valorised and public service ethics denigrated.