Tony Blair has described for the first time his legacy after ten years as Prime Minister, saying that he has shifted the ground of politics and removed for ever the suspicion that Labour was not the party of aspiration.

With the anniversary of Labour’s decade of power coming next week, Mr Blair has brushed aside earlier doubts about celebrating it and sent a 24-page document to every Labour MP setting out what he sees as his Government’s achievements.

Fears of looking like a lame duck have deterred Mr Blair from talking about his legacy or indeed his departure plans. He has also been worried about being mocked for self-congratulation at a time when Labour is severely down in the polls and heading for dismal results in next week’s local elections.

But with Mr Blair within days of announcing his departure, he and Downing Street bit the bullet this week and prepared what they say is a factual and realistic assessment of the ten Labour years without pretending that everything has gone right or that the party’s work is anywhere near done.

In a letter to every Labour MP, Mr Blair recognised the party’s “difficulties and troubles” and accepted that critics would try to argue that nothing much had changed. But in 1997 commentators were questioning whether tax-funded public services had a future, politics was fought out over the economy with memories fresh of high inflation and interest rates, the debate about Europe was crude and Britain’s influence in the world was dwindling. “Every one of these arguments has changed. Every one has been changed by what we have done,” he wrote.

Britain had enjoyed the longest period of growth for 200 years, with 2.5 million more in work; school standards were up across the board; in healthcare no one waited for more than six months; crime was down 35 per cent; and cities had been regenerated.

Mr Blair, who is expected to set out his timetable for leaving the week after next, said that new Labour was founded on an idea that there was no need to choose between social justice and prosperity. “We saw the global economy was changing in profound ways. Human capital was becoming as important as physical capital. The country needed to be modernised, to equip it for the new age.”

Ten years on, that was the governing idea of politics and every contender for power had to profess to believe in it. That was why Labour’s achievements were durable and “we have forced a serious identity crisis, by no means yet resolved, on our opponents”.

Mr Blair acknowledged that the strong views generated by the war in Iraq were still felt. History would make its judgment on his policy “but the priority for the moment has to be to support the long-term reconstruction of the country and improving security”.

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