Tony Blair is in his ninth year as prime minister. He must look wistfully at a leader like Portia Simpson Miller, who has just been elected and is basking in the sunshine of public approval.

Diane Abbott

Blair, by contrast, has just come through a disastrous week: his health minister was shouted down by health workers at, not one, but two trade union conferences; his deputy is embroiled in a sex scandal; his security minister is accused of letting thousands of dangerous foreign criminals loose in the community and this week he faces local elections in which the Labour Party is widely predicted to do badly.

Britain has a free health service that most developing countries can only dream of. And since coming into power, my party has doubled the amount of money spent on it. But it seems that a health service provided absolutely free on demand and financed by taxation will never be able to put up with the demands on it. And, despite all the extra money, some hospitals are making cuts and many health workers' jobs are threatened.

So Blair's health minister, Patricia Hewitt, has been abused and barracked at two union conferences in the past week. The workers concerned are nurses, and this behaviour is unusual for them, so Hewitt is widely regarded as being humiliated.

The sex scandal involving Blair's deputy, John Prescott, has been covered by the newspapers in graphic detail and their usual relish. Sixty-eight year-old Prescott has been married for 44 years, but last week it was revealed that he has been having an affair with his blonde secretary. In most countries the newspapers would discreetly ignore such activity, but in Britain they go to town.

There have been interviews with the woman's aggrieved boyfriend complaining that she talked about Prescott in her sleep. And there have been pages of photographs of Prescott cuddling his lady love, including one at a party where Prescott lifted her up and her legs are draped around his neck.

But the most damaging scandal last week concerned the home secretary (security minister), Charles Clarke. It has been revealed that since 1999 over 1,000 foreign national prisoners, who ought to have been considered for deportation at the end of their sentences, have instead been released into the community and have promptly disappeared. They include many murderers, rapists, paedophiles and drug dealers. And the media are in uproar.

CLARKE. at the centre of a damaging scandal involving foreign national prisoners

The largest group of these foreign national prisoners are actually Jamaicans - 175- compared to the next largest group of 59 Nigerians. Luckily for Jamaica's reputation, the British Press has not zeroed in on the preponderance of Jamaicans. Deportees are very unpopular in Jamaica, but as far as British public opinion is concerned, foreign-born prisoners should be ejected from the country as swiftly as possible.

What makes this scandal even more damaging is that Tony Blair and Charles Clarke have emphasised their willingness to be tough on crime and criminals. The missing foreign national prisoners make the government look, not just incompetent, but like people who cannot be taken at their word.

And all this in the last few days before local elections that were already expected to go badly for Blair. The newspapers have plastered their front pages all week with photographs of the under-fire ministers and are calling for resignations. Commentators are bitter in their condemnation and are speculating that it is all falling apart for Blair.

It is all so different from when he was elected in 1997. Those were days of hope. Then he was youthful-looking with a full head of hair. He was elected with a record majority on a huge wave of popular expectation. People were tired of old guard politicians. Blair seemed fresh, youthful and energetic. Even supporters of other parties were hopeful and wished him well.

He promised he would not be like old-style politicians. He promised an end to incompetence and sleaze. He promised national renewal. People are so bitter and angry with him now precisely because they hoped for so much. The public and the media really thought that Blair would be different from what went before.

As his administration appears to be collapsing in a morass of allegations of corruption and mismanagement, the sense of disillusionment is intense. Blair will probably struggle through the current crisis, but for him it will never be 'glad confident morning' again.

The moral for politicians everywhere is that the higher the expectations when you take office, the more intense will be the public anger when you fail to live up to them. And politicians should take every advantage of their honeymoon with the public because once that phase is over, the backlash can be savage.

The fear factor

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS