After five years in office, New Labour has still not found its sense of purpose

It may seem an absurdly small incident on which to hang an assessment of Tony Blair's five years in office. But complaining to the Press Complaints Commission about mischievous reporting on the Prime Minister's alleged wish to play a more prominent role in the Queen Mother's lying in state tells us a good deal about the way New Labour has chosen to run the country. Of course, what Mr Blair's office said to the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod about the arrangements for this piece of state pageantry is stunningly trivial compared with, say, the running of the economy, the battle to deliver quality public services, the Northern Ireland peace agreement or even the Ecclestone or Hinduja affairs.

But it is important because Downing Street cannot rise above it. It is an excellent example of what has prevented this government from becoming the truly bold, radical reforming administration promised to us in May 1997. "The time for words is over; it is time to do," Mr Blair said then; half a decade on, with some fine successes to its credit, the abiding impression is of a government less interested in "doing" than being seen to do.

When Mr Blair was granted his first landslide majority by the electorate there was much talk about his government emulating the two other great progressive administrations of the past century, those led by Attlee and Asquith. On the world stage he has shown commendable courage and vision, often at great political risk, while at home he seems content to dissipate his energy on futile little skirmishes.

There is also a worrying sense of drift. After longer in office than Callaghan or Heath, and on his way to surpassing Lloyd George, Wilson and Macmillan, Mr Blair still spends too much time dreaming up "eye-catching initiatives", often just to grab headlines, and too little time laying the foundations of the "new Britain" that he once spoke about so often.

It feels almost as if Mr Blair is frustrated that the "big idea" has eluded him. The Budget's "tax and spend" to fix the NHS was, in truth, an admission of defeat. Constitutional reform has been shelved, our schools have not become world-beaters and conditions on our sink estates have not visibly improved. Mr Blair has been too impatient, too fond of the knee-jerk reaction and too inclined to spin his way out of trouble. Jo Moore was unlucky to have been caught sending her notorious e-mail about burying bad news on 11 September, but she was acting in a way that was characteristic of her bosses.

All that would be dispiriting enough. Still worse, however, is the degree to which so much of the spinning has been directed against fellow ministers. There may not have been anything as damaging as the open warfare between the Chancellor's press officer Charlie Whelan and Peter Mandelson that broke out in the autumn of 1997, and which threatened to destabilise the Government's economic policy. But the low-intensity warfare between No 10 and No 11 has been a tragic feature of the past five years, as seemingly witnessed by the leaking of Mr Blair's daft idea of withdrawing child benefit from the parents of persistent truants.

To have a powerful Prime Minister or Chancellor is one thing; to have both trying to run a Presidential-style government from adjacent bunkers can only result in paralysis – as we see all too clearly on the pressing question of the euro. And now we find the Home Secretary lobbing a few grenades at the "money God", Gordon Brown.

To borrow Mr Blair's verbless oratorical style, we might sum things up as follows: Cabinet neutered. Politics discredited. Voters disconnected. True, the media have too often unfairly treated politicians as if they were all congenital liars and cheats. But New Labour must take its share of the blame for the spread of cynicism. This is not what we thought the new Britain would feel like.