I think it was Sir Alex Ferguson (a major party supporter) who upbraided some of his spoilt, famous players with a reality check which went something like this: remember that ordinary working class fans have to save up months of their hard-earned low wages just to come and see you rich youngsters play football; and what you do on the pitch each week affects them in their ordinary lives; in particular, remember that when they go into work on Monday morning they have to face their workmates who may insult them and rib them and mock them on the basis of how you perform individually and as a team; a bad losing performance from you affects how the fan's life is on Monday morning and sometimes for the rest of the week: it matters.

Isn't is the same in our party? Are you, as an ordinary Labour party member, sick and tired of having to defend the increasingly indefensible as you go to work or meet with members of your extended family or go to the gym, or whatever? Because I am.

We do it out of genuine loyalty or party discipline (er..perhaps) or because we feel stupid and hypocritical for being a member if we don't.  

And I think the hierachy of our party simply has no idea about this.

As a former councillor, with even more strength I am publicly identified with the party I have been a member of for 20 years. When things are going out of control nationally (as they seem to be doing non-stop) it is a ritual daily humiliation for us, isn't it? Walking down the street, in the local shops, at family gatherings, it impacts on the ordinary everyday level.

Don't we find that nasty bloke at work who we never liked because he's a fascist making a bee-line for us the morning after the latest blunder ready to pounce in the car park with the barbed one-liner (in his case a 20-liner, he's so thick)?

Don't we find we have even to endure the ironic, side-swipe comments from our close friends? It's a bit like having, to coin a phrase, scars on our backs?

Now I'm not saying that politics isn't a rough, tough old game and we do have to take some of it on the chin, but it's simply getting worse by the day. Obviously, depending on our points of view, the Iraq legacy has been the most serious and grave. Most people made their mind up on that one long ago, though.

But the insistent daily grind of apparent incompetence and hypocrisy and plain ignorant behaviour at the top of our party is what we have to endure with varying degrees of stoicism over the last 2 months in particular; and it hurts.

What I can't stand is that we are often prevailed upon by party hacks and the Stephen Byers-types to back our leaders and talk up the party and point out the good stuff, rather than, frankly, to join in with our mates and enemies and give the party leaders a good metaphorical kicking.

I am sick and tired as an ordinary member having to suffer the daily slings and arrows of outrageous behaviour from on high and being told to suffer it some more.

The ever-ongoing Prescott nonsense, the whole home office fiasco, the Ruth Kelly hypocrisy, the Loans scandal (by which I mean the fact that we definitely took them and hid them; not, I hasten to add, the cash-for-loans enquiry - which is a whole other ball game) have been for me the most recent nadirs in what I have to put up with in my real everyday life.

Last year one of the nadirs was the Trust Schools nonsense: our party and our MPs voted overwhelming against it in parliament. Still it becomes law and I have to defend it as one of Tony's pet projects. As a teacher, of course, this is one of the occasions when I simply have failed to defend it on a Monday morning - why should I, when most of our party's MPs didn't? I am here to support the Labour Party's projects, not Tony's supported by Cameron.

The only thing I've been able to push with pride recently has been the  8 extra days holiday for those who don't get bank holidays off.

I am afraid, though, that the Cash for honours/ obstruction of justice Police Enquiry drip, drip, drip actually has done the most damage and causes the most damage to me personally.

In the workplace I am personally tainted by it: instead of pride in the party I love, I feel real shame. I feel my character is judged badly by others for guilt by association with that lot at the top.

Whether or not any charges come out of this, enough facts have come out of this to make it extremely bad news. Over-closeness to unprincipled business leaders and their tainted money has tainted our party and every member in it.

The conclusion is stark, though: every day that Tony Blair continues in office is making the experiences I have outlined above worse. Because no-one sees him as the person to be able to change things. The paralysing status quo is extremely damaging.

There are those who suggest that we 'owe it' to Tony to let him stay on til a time of his choosing and let him do 10 years. This is nonsense. Tony is where he is because of ordinary hard-working members and voters. He holds a position of privilege and it is not a right. He owes us.

It is similarly insulting to those of us left in the party actually campaigning in local government/assembly elections to suggest that he should wait til after them, so Gordon doesn't get a good kicking to start off. I don't hold a candle for either camp, but I'd far rather go into the elections with Gordon, and the result of that would be more Labour members elected than under Tony. That's the bottom line.

Of course I do not expect things to go well in May, but why should Tony being there make it better? We should not be structuring our party's campaigning over how easy or not things will be in May for either Tony or Gordon.

The party members have suffered enough and need a fresh start. They need to have things happen in the Labour Party now, to make them feel good about the party again. Because at the moment I cannot point to anyone I actually know in the party who feels proud of it at the moment.

Those at the top should listen to Fergie: what you do affects us in a very real way, every day.