By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

Blair has to rebuild the bond of trust

He has spent years telling voters they would soon all be experiencing first hand the benefits of his massive public investment programme.

But internal Labour surveys are said to show that, while there have indeed been improvements in health, education and other public services, the government is not gaining the credit.

It has been suggested the public may not believe the improvements they are witnessing individually are widespread.

Equally, it may be that the reaction to any perceived improvements are more along the lines of "and about time too" rather than "thank you Tony".

Bond of trust

More worrying for the prime minister, however, would be the suggestion that the reason for this apparent anomaly is the breakdown in trust between him and the public.

Since the whole Iraq War-Hutton Report crisis, so the thinking goes, some voters simply no longer believe that things really are getting better and that a third Labour government would step up the pace of improvements.

Government needs to draw a line under Hutton report

Restoring that bond of trust has now become the government's number one priority and, not surprisingly, was at the centre of the special cabinet meeting convened in Downing Street on Thursday morning.

As soon as the routine cabinet meeting ended, ministers moved into a so-called "political" session with the specific task of focusing Britain back onto the domestic agenda.

The prime minister wants to draw a line under Iraq and Hutton and get back to health and education.

Mostly, he wants ministers to start pushing their achievements and coming up with what would once have been dubbed "eye catching initiatives", before that phrase was devalued by spin doctors.

He set an example himself by announcing a proposal to refurbish every secondary school in the country over the next 15 years.

But this is a long term proposal and there are fears voters may simply dismiss such promises as more pre-election puff.

Closer to home

None the less, we can now probably expect to see ministers delivering a whole series of similar initiatives, combined with some more concentrated attempts to boast about their achievements so far.

Whether this will do any good, however, must be an open question.

A significant number of those Labour MPs who accept they are in trouble at the moment are starting to suggest the problem is not actually with the government but with the prime minister.

Polling suggests that, irrespective of what the new Butler inquiry may find, most voters have now made up their minds about the prime minister's actions over the war and its fallout.

They may indeed be bored with the seemingly endless post-mortems, and be willing to look at issues closer to home.

Serious problem

Yet, as the latest row over migrant labour has revealed, there are still plenty of domestic issues that can sneak out of the woodwork to stymie his best laid plans.

And all of his comes against a background of widespread speculation, albeit in the Westminster bubble, about his future.

A significant number of those Labour MPs who accept they are in trouble at the moment - and most of them will admit that in private, if not in public - are starting to suggest the problem is not actually with the government but with the prime minister.

It is one of the downsides of running a Presidential-style administration.

If he fails in his campaign to rebuild that personal bond of trust with voters - which was, after all, one of his major selling points at the last two elections - it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the talk about a pre-election change of leader will starts up again.

He may have escaped the last "biggest ever crisis" over his leadership. But Tony Blair is not yet free and clear.