But we do seem to get rather a lot of Rome, don't we? When, for example, are we going to see something about a couple of star-crossed Vandals, a wrongly convicted Ostrogoth, or, indeed, anything to do with the most unjustly ignored tribe of all, the Alans, from whom, no doubt, the great gardener is descended? Why this fascination? I know about the nostalgic nod from one lost empire to another, and the parallel achievements in organisational skills and subjugating technological inferiors, but has no one paused to ponder on our more concrete association, their invasion, conquest and occupation of us?We don't come out of it well. Coming soon, I notice, more Rome. This time it's the BBC's blockbuster of the same name, a multi-series of love, legionaries, plots, patricians, plebs and wanton women with names ending in "ia", the sort of thing given a gloriously bad name by Frankie Howerd and Phil Silvers: "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for..." Which, of course, it will be nothing like. That way we can secure the long term sustainability of the progressive values on which public services are founded. Doing so means empowering individual citizens to exercise greater control over their own lives This is the new radical-centre in British politics It is territory thinking Tories want to win. We cannot allow them to do so.Completing what we have started in modernising Britain's public services is not just a matter of securing Tony Blair's legacy.

It will help determine whether New Labour can go on winning when he is finally gone.The writer was Health Secretary, 1999-2003. And whether it extends patient choice into primary, community and social services.All five tests have one common purpose: to make excellence in public services the preserve not just of some people but of all. And it must pass the test of reforming local councils' role so they become commissioners, not providers of school services.The tests for the health white paper are whether it brings new providers from the private and voluntary sectors into primary care to help break the equation whereby the poorest communities invariably get the poorest services. The Tories might finally be waking from their slumbers.These factors make the forthcoming education and health white papers so important. They are a critical test of New Labour's ability to set the future agenda.

If the education white paper learns from Swedish reforms and American charter schools by giving parents - particularly the poorest - the power to choose then we will pass that test.So too if it obliges local councils by law to encourage new school providers from the independent and voluntary sectors as well as the public sector so that parents get a wider choice and schools as well as hospitals feel the benefit of managed competition. And when some parents use wealth to exercise school choice we should not condemn choice but redistribute it. Reform is a route to realise Labour values, not betray them.And fourth there is a political imperative behind reform. Delivering public service improvement helps deliver electoral success. And reform is a potent symbol of New Labour's determination to avoid the trap of incumbency by instead relentlessly pursuing a modern, progressive agenda of change.Reform has helped Tony Blair reshape the centre ground in British politics and force our political opponents to the extremes But now things may be changing.