WHENEVER a politician starts to bang on about the Sixties, it is advisable to watch out. You can be sure trickery is afoot.

As soon as Tony Blair started rumbling about how his five-year crime plan marked "the end of the 1960s liberal, social consensus on law and order", the political claptrap alarm bells rang inside my head.

Politicians who dip back into the swinging decade either want to impress with their cool credentials by tediously pointing out that once they were young and hip, man; or they want to whip up a frenzied froth in which all social ills can be blamed on the drop-out decade.

It is no surprise, ten years down the line, to see Tony Blair pulling the latter of these tawdry tricks. The language he used was aimed straight at the headlines of the more right-wing newspapers. Here was Tough Tony playing to the gallery again, waving raw meat for the rabble. Here was Tony the Terrible, proving once more that he is the most right-wing left-wing politician ever (or possibly the most left-wing right-wing politician; who can spot the difference any more?).

Much has been made of New Labour's tendency to employ the dark arts of spin to keep its vacuous message in the air. Yet sometimes Tony Blair comes over not so much as a master of spin as something darker altogether.

There are people paid to make a living spouting on about the evilness of the 1960s, when the fabric of society started to fray and so forth. They are called newspaper columnists. Tony Blair was pontificating like the worst/best of them (delete according to prejudice), leaning forward on his barstool to put the world to rights.

Do we really want a prime minister - what's more a Labour prime minister - who falls back on the inflammatory language of the right-wing Fleet Street ranter?

Next thing you know, Tony Blair will be popping up on Radio 4's The Moral Maze, known to some of us as the most annoying radio programme in the history of the universe. "Yes, Melanie, I quite agree with you - the shameful legacy of the liberal consensus has caused all the social problems of the modern world, even down to never being able to buy shoes that fit properly."

Such feelings do not come from someone with strong affections towards the Sixties. True, I did become a teenager late in that decade, but shortly afterwards the hippie Indian rug was pulled from under my feet, sending me tumbling into the mishmash delights of the Seventies.

Blaming the Sixties for our ills today is, to coin a technical and rather intellectual phrase, rubbish. What sort of lumpy thinking can come up with such statements?

It could as easily be argued that many reforms of the Sixties led to a more mature, happier and relaxed society: homosexuals were no longer persecuted; divorce was made easier (ending the rigidity of the miserable-ever-after marriage); the state stopped telling us what we could and could not watch; capital punishment was at last abolished; the pill liberated millions and ushered in a degree of sexual freedom and fulfilment; and abortion was made legal, rather than being pushed into criminal back alleys.

Why not instead cite the me-me-me Eighties for our present problems in society? Surely the grab-grab years of Thatcherism could as easily be blamed for the way society is today. Yet even that would be dishonest, because these matters are complex, with roots shooting off in all directions. Easy blame can only ever be a con trick.

Besides, what exactly is the "liberal consensus" and who belonged to it? I haven't a clue myself. And did this woolly conspiracy convince New Labour to send record numbers of people to prison, something which hardly looks like the behaviour of a government spoiled by the liberal Sixties?

If there ever was a liberal consensus, Michael Howard finally strangled its last breath during his hardline spell as Home Secretary - and then handed the corpse over to New Labour, who jumped on it with paroxysms of pious delight.

Updated: 11:25 Thursday, July 22, 2004