Sooner than tax big business or the rich, Blunkett profors to charge the students, using the ludicrous claim that it will "expand opportunity"
Alan Milburn outlined plans for the first 14 PFI-build hospitals, and insisted that the Labour government will underwrite these 30year deals - even as his press release admitted that nobody yet knows how much these buildings and support services will cost the NHS Trusts, which will lease them from city-backed consortia.
But there is strong competition among ministers to be leader of the right wing pack.
"Mad" Frankie Field at Social Security is honing his reactionary plans to savage the state pension and remodel the welfare state along the lines perfected by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
But Education Secretary David Blunkett - to the delight of the Tory press - has led the charge of the Right Brigade, driving a vital wedge into the welfare state with his determination to impose £1,000 a year tuition fees on university students, claiming with cynical incoherence TO be "widening opportunities" for higher education.
Hand in hand with Tory darling Chris Woodhead of OFSTED, Schools Minister Stephen Byers has joined the offensive aimed at scapegoating teachers and underfunded schools in deprived areas.
The nonsense of Tory nursery vouchers may have been scrapped, but there is still insufficient cash to finance nursery places for all, let alone the promised reduction in school class sizes, while school budgets face more cuts to come next year.
Not wishing to be outdone on the reactionary front, Home Secretary Jack Straw stepped straight into the warm driving seat of Michael Howard's "lock 'em up" bandwagon, and put his foot on the accelerator. Prison building is now one of the few areas of growing state spending, making it much easier for young people to get into jail than university, and unruly youth not yet in the slammer could soon be facing a New Labour curfew, under orders to stay home after 9pm.
For local government, there seems little real change to come. Out goes the Tory phrase "Compulsory Competitive Tendering" - but in comes Labour's requirement to show "best value" in the purchasing of services, with few people able to tell the difference in practice.
Out goes "universal capping" - but the cap stays put. Labour has also set its face against "excessive council tax rises", without defining the limits. Gordon Brown's limited promise of a phased release of housing capital receipts has yet to take any tangible form, and many councils are projecting fresh cuts in capital and revenue spending and front-line services next year.
There are already signs that some of the biggest changes will be a new Blairite purge of left wing councillors in advance of next May's elections.
The "welfare to work" proposals are also likely to rebound on local councils which become involved, together with the voluntary sector, in creating pretend "jobs" for up to 250,000 under-25s.
Labour seems happiest overmopping up in privatised utilities remain largely immune from government interference. turning elected bodies - sending "hit squads" in to override elected school governing bodies or council Education Committees - while the stooges running Tory quangos and the profiteers mopping up in privatised utilities remain largely imfrom government interference.
It's only been four months, say Labour's apologists. They took over an awful mess. Nobody can work miracles.
Maybe not: but the key issue is the direction in which Labour is travelling.
All of the "unthinkable" thoughts which have been acted upon or leaked to the media are policies which undermine the welfare state, victimise the most oppressed and deprived, and leave intact the wealth and power of the highest-paid elite.
Ruled out as utterly un thinkable has been any return to progressive taxation to fund decent public services.
In these four months, for all the hyped rhetoric about "modernising" we have seen all the hallmarks of an old-style, right-wing Labour government, the type of government which under Wilson in the 1960s gave us the Seafarers' Strike and anti-union laws, and which in the 1970s brought steadily falling living standards, the Winter of Discontent... and Margaret Thatcher.
We haveseen Labour attempt, as so often before, to rope in the union bureaucrats - and succeed in silencing much of what passes for the "left" among the top union bosses -notably GMB boss Edmonds, TGWU chief Morris and UNISON's spineless Bickerstaffe. But while the union leaders bite their lips, their members are facing a new wave of attacks on public services and on their rights and living standards. It's not yet clear how long the dead weight of bureaucracy will combine with naivete, demoralisation and apathy at rank and file level to keep the lid on any build-up of resistance.
But it seems not unlikely that as a new round of cuts takes shape and grabs headlines through the winter, before its first anniversary New Labour could be facing its old enemy - the working class and its demands.
asylum seekers is called for in