As we head towards what is widely believed to be the election date of May 5 the political landscape has been reshaped as a desperate and newly-cunning Tory leadership has sought to exploit the weaknesses of New Labour.
Who would ever have imagined that Michael Howard's rag-tag group of unknown Tory backwoodspeople could cash in so successfully on Blair's failures, climbing in the opinion polls, and now emerge as self-styled champions of restoring the link between the state pension and average wages?
None of New Labour's policy failures more clearly underlines Blair's abject refusal to confront the power of big capital than the betrayal of the pensioners - of today and tomorrow.
Tomorrow's pensioners face an onslaught on their entitlements in both private schemes and the public sector (see page 8).
Meanwhile today's pensioners continue to suffer the daily deprivation that flowed from Blair's refusal to carry through the long-standing Labour promise to restore the link between the state pension and average wages that Margaret Thatcher's government broke in the 1980s.
If this link had been restored every pensioner would be over £30 per week better off.
Many have also seen their occupational pensions squandered, stolen or reneged upon by collapsing companies, while New Labour's ministers have floundered around ineffectually, offering little or no action.
Their Pensions Protection Fund, which will not come into force until April will do nothing to protect the pensions of people whose schemes begin winding up before April 6 2005.
The Financial Assistance Scheme, supposed to help those who have already lost pension entitlements, is desperately under-funded, worth just 2400m over 20 years, £20m a year - to be shared by up to 65,000 people. This could mean payouts as low as E300 each!
Pensions campaigners argue that up to four times as much money is needed, with payments required over 40 years.
Exploiting Blair's lack of credibility with pensioners, the Tories have now promised a scheme that would halve council tax bills for 3.8 million pensioners households, saving them up to E500 a year.
Mr Howard also promised to restore the link between pensions and earnings, giving "dignity, independence and self-respect" back to pensioners, and to free pensioners from the "tyranny" of meanstested benefits such as New Labour's Pensions Credit.
Anyone who takes Howard at face value has clearly forgotten his role in the Thatcher government which laid the groundwork for today's New Labour policies.
Let's hope memories aren't so short that pensioners have forgotten the contempt with which they were treated when the Tories are in power: rather than giving them or Blair yet another chance to shaft them, pensioners need to throw their support behind Respect and the fight for a socialist alternative.