WHEN HOWARD BELSEY, the protagonist of Zadie Smith’s fine novel, On Beauty, has an affair with his wife’s best friend, he is banished for months to the sitting-room divan. His wife of 30 years, Kiki, refuses to talk to him about their relationship, so he is forced to stew, not knowing whether his marriage will survive. When a plumptious student of less than half his age offers him sex, he can’t resist. The news of the second infidelity inevitably reaches his wife, and she brings the marriage swiftly to an end.

Reading this novel over the past week, and thinking about politics at the same time, I could not help wondering. Is Labour’s relationship with the voters still at the exile and divan stage? Or is it about to reach its ghastly denouement? For the patterns are eerily similar.

What sunders Howard’s and Kiki’s marriage is lack of trust. Having lost it over the first affair, they almost succeed in rebuilding it before the second affair sunders it completely. Like Labour with the voters, theirs had initially been a rapturous relationship, and neither can quite fathom where or how it went wrong, how the joy went out of their lives.

Similarly in Britain, joy with Labour in 1997 was replaced by disillusionment, then suspicion and now outright scepticism. Labour can’t do anything right any more. Just as the erring husband’s peacemaking overtures are rejected by the wounded wife in Smith’s novel, there doesn’t seem to be anything the Government can do for which voters will give it credit.

During the suspicion stage, people were willing to concede that their own experience of public services was good, but they seemed to believe that they were the lucky ones. So, even if their visit to hospital might have been prompt, efficient and effective, they were convinced that the national picture was much gloomier. If waiting lists were down and survival rates up, that must be because the statistics had been fiddled.

Now, though, suspicion has been replaced by outright disbelief and denial. The latest poll this week, by ICM for The Guardian, was quite extraordinary. People were asked to compare their experiences with 1997, when Labour first won power. By large margins, they denied that they were better off, that it was any easier to get a job, that they had more spare money to spend on things they enjoyed, that there were fewer people living in poverty, and that Gordon Brown had created economic success.

Most of these are personal questions, so they should not fall prey to “I’m the lucky one” thinking. Let’s take them one by one. No better off? The national income has risen by 24 per cent after inflation since 1997. And average household disposable income, which means money available for spending after tax and housing costs, has gone up by 26 per cent in real terms.

No easier to get a job? The unemployment rate has fallen from 7.2 per cent in 1997 to 5.5 per cent now and the employment rate has gone up by roughly the same amount. No more spare money to spend on things they enjoy? How then do we explain the surge in overseas travel? Who is it that buys all those designer clothes and handbags? Walk along any high street or climb aboard any plane and you will see that it is no longer just the rich.

No fewer people in poverty? Tell that to those have benefited from Mr Brown’s redistribution of income from the middle classes to the poor. The number of people living on less than 60 per cent of median income after housing costs (the classic measure of poverty) has fallen by 2.4 million since 1997. If Mr Brown can’t sell this as an achievement, he deserves the Gerald Ratner award for salesmanship.

Is this a case of false memory syndrome? Do people really fail to remember what their personal circumstances were like nine years ago? It is not as if they are projecting current dissatisfaction on to their recollection. For the same poll showed that 59 per cent felt confident about their personal financial situation.

We are living through an unprecedented period of personal affluence, yet everyone seems to have forgotten the horrors of recession, negative equity and mass unemployment. Yes, housing may be increasingly unaffordable, but that is a symptom of economic success and adds to the wealth of those who already own homes. Apart from that, there is little to complain about in the past decade’s economic performance.

So this poll portends trouble for the Government. The one achievement that Labour felt was solid and indisputable — the successful handling of the economy — is not just failing to earn it credit but is actively being disputed by voters. Bizarrely, people refuse to admit that they are better off, even though a swift perusal of their bank statements or earnings slips — let alone their wardrobes — would prove them wrong in an instant.

Like Howard Belsey trying to rebuild his marriage, Labour politicians are in a state of incomprehension. “What more can we do?” they ask. Faced with rage, hatred and mistrust from the other side, they are completely at a loss. And they can’t even console themselves that the Tories are hated more — in the ICM poll, the Conservatives had a nine-point lead.

Now they are exiled to the sitting-room divan, it is too late to say they are sorry. It is no good pointing to all the things they have done right. To the wronged wife or voter, they are beyond redemption. And they are unlikely to be forgiven any time soon.

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