Steve Richards: The real opposition to this Government is on the left

'It is Tony Blair's own side that is daring to acquire some more powerful ammunition'

At last the Government is getting some effective opposition. Only it is not coming from the official Opposition. Five potential Conservative leaders fix their nervy gaze on Tony Blair and his team, but make little impact. It is Blair's own side that is daring to acquire some more powerful ammunition. There is more internal restlessness and constructive criticism than there has been at any time since he became leader in 1994.

None of the Conservative candidates has even started to find a convincing critique of the Government. They talk a great deal about Blair's inadequacies, although only in imprecise terms. Describing Blair as "vulnerable" is a favoured starting point for the candidates. It tends to be a favoured ending point as well.

A coherent assessment of his political opponents was also a missing gap from the Hague repertoire, a fairly fundamental omission. At no point in his four years of leadership did he offer his analysis of what the Blair Government was all about.

The Conservatives' problem is that none of them knows how to make a wide-ranging attack on a Government that has accepted so much of the settlement they themselves left behind. This is why, when John Major makes a rare appearance above the parapet, he attacks the Government for "spin". As he said on the Today programme during the election "they are following most of my policies". His worry was the way "his" policies were being presented.

In too many areas Major has a point about the familiarity of the Government's policies: the expansion of Private Finance Initiatives ("I introduced those", declared Ken Clarke at the launch of his leadership campaign, as if this was an effective line of attack, to claim a copyright on a policy and a flawed one at that.); the "wait-and-see" approach to the single currency, a passive policy that makes entry almost impossible; an implicit endorsement of Major's privatisation of the railways by imposing a similar structure on the London Underground; the strangling of local government.

The list could go on. As the former Tory minister, Lord Gilmour, argues in the latest edition of the London Review of Books, what was most marked about Labour's first term was the continuity with the Conservatives' record. Lord Gilmour is well to the left of Blair, but he has surely hit upon the great Tory dilemma – how to oppose a Government that is reinforcing many of the policies that the Conservatives instigated?

This produced one of the great illusory contortions in Labour's first term. When, for example, Gordon Brown announced his first extremely tight spending round, Hague and others screamed that he was "reckless and irresponsible". No, he wasn't. He was imposing limits on spending that would have made Thatcher think twice. Hague fell into a trap, affecting a fury that made Brown look as if he was spending more than he really was. In fact, he was being so recklessly responsible that Britain's public services are now at Third World levels, the subject of accurately alarmist articles in distinguished foreign newspapers and magazines around the world.

In his article Gilmour rightly makes an exception of Brown's tax and benefit reforms. Because they are so wretchedly complicated these radical policies tend to be overlooked. From the minimum wage to the working families' tax credit, Brown has done more to help the low paid than any Tory Chancellor would have contemplated.

The reforms take the sting out of the attacks from Roy Hattersley, the latest of which made the front pages although he has been making the same points in one or two articles a week for several years. But Hattersley's wider point about the dangers of lacking an ideological compass, of floating without direction, is more potent. Already it seems that the Government has lost any potential momentum arising from a second landslide. As in the first term, several scared ministers are hitting the ground reviewing policies. There is a danger of Blair floating, as Bill Clinton did in his second term, which makes a credible internal opposition more important and desirable.

This is taking many diverse forms, from Neil Kinnock's call for a special NHS tax to the mischievous flirtation of some trade union leaders with the Liberal Democrats, and further on to the robust advocacy of the euro from Ken Livingstone. All of these individuals currently find that they have more political space for ideas than the Conservative leadership candidates. None of them can be accused of proposing wildly left-wing policies. It does not take very much to find that you are to the left of the Government.

Kinnock's demand for an earmarked tax is not new. He has been calling for such a policy for several years. Given the Government's preoccupation with the public services, his latest call is timely, which is why it made more waves this time. Such a policy is supported by his old colleague, Charles Clarke, now chairman of the party. It was also one of the main proposals of the excellent Fabian report published last year on taxation and spending.

The appeal of an earmarked tax is partly that it fleshes out the impressive soundbite that Paddy Ashdown coined a few years ago: "No taxation without explanation". Of more practical importance, it is a progressive way of providing more resources to a health service that would still be relatively under resourced compared with other European countries.

Kinnock's innovation would also help to address one of the concerns raised by the left-of-centre IPPR report – that Private Finance Initiatives were an expensive and inefficient way of addressing the shortfall in the NHS budget. The IPPR was also highly critical of the Government's plans for the London Underground, while having some constructive proposals for ways in which the private sector could be used to improve public services.

These friendly critics are fertile with ideas and policies. So, erratically, are the Liberal Democrats, who were the only party at the election to tentatively raise themes of concern to some who probably did not bother to vote, such as the environment. Another of the Government's external critics, Ken Livingstone, has also recently raised another taboo. He has become one of the most persuasive spokesmen for the euro. Come to think of it, he is almost the only spokesman for the euro. Last week Livingstone gave a speech, well received by the capital's captains of industry, warning of the dire impact on business of staying outside the euro. An entire speech on the advantages of joining the single currency was a political novelty.

Some senior Labour loyalists who are pro-Euro and keen on a more pluralist style of politics are also looking at ways of putting greater pressure on Blair from within the party. They are planning to enter the fray soon.

For the first time Blair needs to heed the warning voices to the left of him. Until now there has not even been the voices to heed. Over the next few months the previously muted voices will get louder and more confident.

s.richards@independent.co.uk