CONTRARY to belief, New Labour is listening. Unfortunately, it cannot hear anything. The party is cocooned from the people that swept it to power by the very scale of that victory. The 1997 landslide effectively left ministers cut off from the outside world.

In opposition, Tony Blair and his colleagues were brilliant arbiters of the public mood. In fortress Westminster, they became isolated from the gradual disillusionment of the New Labour voter. Their majority was so huge, the mandate so overwhelming, that they believed their grip on power was unassailable.

When New Labour came face-to-face with its declining popularity, it was wrong-footed. Mr Blair finally discovered that he was no longer Britain's Eva Peron when he was jeered and heckled by, of all people, members of the Women's Institute. He was, for a few memorable seconds, paralysed with shock.

Labour's massive majority has been its downfall in another way, too. The party was thrown into government by an electoral earthquake. The political landscape was changed completely overnight, and voters expected Britain to change almost as quickly. Their hopes were always too high.

Labour has done many things well, not least overseeing continued economic prosperity. But 1997 voters who expected Britain 2000 to be a radically different place have been disappointed.

Such was the frustration with unfulfilled expectations, people even took to the streets to air their protest. Mr Blair should have heard the fuel crisis juggernaut rumbling towards him. But from his insulated Downing Street bunker it was upon him before he knew it.

When that protest crashed into his carefully-controlled world, badly denting his popularity in the process, Mr Blair finally discovered the scale of public disenchantment. He is now striving to make amends, with apologies over the Millennium Dome and fuel prices.

The good news for Mr Blair is that he has an immediate platform from which to relaunch his vision and his party's prospects: his Labour conference speech tomorrow. He must use it to close the gap between the "people's Prime Minister" and the people.