Tony Blair made it clear: Britain needed a “new approach to crime”. He said: “Crime is now rightly taking its place as a principal item on the political agenda.” That was 13 years ago. Yesterday he used much the same rubric to address the balance between victim and offender as when he was trying to seize the law and order initiative from John Major’s Conservatives. Evidence of empty rhetoric or driving passion? Or simply, after nine years in office, a failure to deliver?

Few who heard Mr Blair’s speech in Bristol yesterday would doubt his personal interest in seeing efficient justice for both victim and offender. A less committed politician would not have volunteered to be Shadow Home Secretary in 1992, an eccentric career move in the Labour Party of the time. But it is also inescapable that the Prime Minister is seeking to place cultural and judicial changes in the dock when his Government’s handling of law and order issues has reached lamentable levels. If there is an element of the diversionary tactic about his pleas for a “complete change of mind-set”, it is artful. Only the handful of criminologists and civil liberties activists that Mr Blair is happy to antagonise are likely to find anything remotely offensive in his text. If Mr Blair is serious, he must explain why, after so long in charge of the national dialogue, we need a new approach.

Part of his answer is that forces outside government control have shaped recent events, such as judicial rulings on immigration and deportation. The European Court of Human Rights’ 1996 Chahal decision does tie government hands. It ruled that the risk a suspected terrorist might pose to British citizens could not be considered in a deportation case. A ruling that even failed asylum claimants from Zimbabwe could not be returned there saw a 50 per cent rise in such claims in a month. Such decisions can indeed be hard for the public to swallow.

Mr Blair is on less firm ground when addressing terrain over which his ministers have held sway since 1997. The introduction of the Human Rights Act has been botched. It is the current — unproven — government contention that many freakish decisions taken in that Act’s name are in fact mistaken and have nothing to do with its provisions. John Reid is talking of the need for civil servants to have better human rights advice quicker. This may help. But, damagingly, ministers have allowed the argument to get away from them. If the rights of the offender and the victim are becoming confused, ministers are as culpable as anyone.

Mr Blair has made a start on serious attempts to tackle antisocial behaviour. Threatening youths, incivilities, graffiti and badly lit estates can have a considerable effect on the perception of crime. Those lucky enough never to have lived next to a “neighbour from hell” cannot understand how much the quality of life can be improved by his or her removal. But government efforts have too often fallen short of Mr Blair’s rhetoric. The submissions the Prime Minister sought before yesterday’s speech are full of ideas, from the expansion of community courts meting out swift and visible justice, to more neighbourhood beat officers and better systems to allow victims to keep track of their cases. These are good ideas, but they are arriving awfully late in Mr Blair’s tenure. Given the timing, it is not clear whether Mr Blair was yesterday wringing his hands, saying goodbye or gearing up for action.