The workings of politics can rarely be explained simply or particularly rationally, but at least most governments try. Tony Blair's administration, on the other hand, often seems utterly incapable of explaining itself, frequently stumbling into policies and major reforms and then, after the fact, cobbling together some kind of partial explanation for its deeds.

Look at the announcement that the UK will have a Supreme Court last July. Out came the announcement – one of the most significant constitutional changes in recent decades – in a press release one anonymous Monday morning. Bizarrely unprepared, the government then changed its tune a day later, and took until the end of the week to explain why this enormous change was necessary and how the new system would work.

Accusations that Blair's government are 'masters of spin' are wide of the mark. Watching the botched introduction of the new anti-terror legislation recently, it seems a miracle this government gets anything done at all. But, and to the constant astonishment of authors Polly Toynbee and David Walker in their book Better or Worse? Has Labour Delivered?, this government has a long list of achievements.

The book contains a mass of facts that show we are wealthier, healthier, safer, better governed and better educated than ever before. And some – though not all – of this progress is down to the Labour government. Especially after 2002, Gordon Brown's strategy of "progressive universalism" – "We want universal provision but we want to do more for those who need it most" – appears to have succeeded.

While the book is far from uncritical of the Blair's administration, Toynbee and Walker make a valiant effort to provide us with the information that, peculiarly, the government has been unwilling to tell us.

Maybe we do not know about these successes because the media are no longer keen to report positive stories about the actions of politicians. And maybe this media disregard is merely a reflection of the public's rejection of politics in general, and sanctimonious Tony in particular. Whatever the reason, it is a curious and rather depressing state of affairs for those that care about society.

So, apart from prosecuting an unpopular war in Iraq, what else has this government done?

For a start, the NHS is in a rude state of health. Look at the figures and you find that there are more hospitals, better clinics, more doctors and far shorter waiting lists. The NHS has improved so much that private health providers are withdrawing from the UK as the market for their services declines.

Another example is that, in 1997, more than 250,000 people were waiting more than six months for an operation – there were even waiting lists for waiting lists. By 2004, this figure was a little over 65,000. The Health Secretary announced last year that by 2008 no one will wait more than 18 weeks – four and a half months – for an operation, and this is likely to become a reality.

"But, but, but …" I hear you cry, so let's move on, and look at some more statistics. How about the poor? Everyone knows that Blair has done nothing for the poor and only the rich have gained. But it is not true. The very, very top have done well, yes, but so have the whole of the bottom half. The number of children in poverty has fallen by a quarter: an incredible achievement. Through the, admittedly complex, tax credit system, benefits targeted at children rose by 72 per cent between 1997 and 2005.

Despite occasional protests, and the common perception that they have lost out, the number of pensioners living in poverty has declined from 27 per cent in 1997 to 21 per cent in 2004. All pensioners are now guaranteed a minimum income, one that is above the minimum level recommended by demanding pressure groups. Toynbee and Walker note: "Labour's record on benefits, taken in the round, was unprecedented, with 3.7 per cent real terms growth each year in the three years to 2005."

In education, spending has sharply increased. We have more, and much better paid, teachers, new schools and far more people in higher education. Students may leave university with large debts, but the system introduced by the government is far more generous to the children of the poor going to university than the previous one.

The government has introduced a flurry of schemes to improve run-down housing estates and the quality of life of people living in them. Some worked; some did not. Those that did not have been dropped – often attracting the mockery of the hostile press – but is it better to try something and if it does not work drop it, or not to try anything at all? Anti-social behaviour orders, one of these new measures, were roundly attacked when introduced, but are slowly being recognised as effective, and are generally warmly welcomed by those whose lives are most affected.

We are far wealthier than before, with unprecedented levels of employment. Maybe Gordon Brown has been very lucky in presiding over a constantly growing economy – more than twelve years of non-stop growth – but look across the channel at the moribund German economy, or France's troubles, or the precarious situation in the US, and maybe we should not take our stability and prosperity for granted.

Toynbee and Walker's book argues that probably the government's greatest achievement is its range of services and benefits for young children and their parents. The introduction of Sure Start, offering education and services to children in deprived areas, and then guaranteeing all three-year-olds a place in a nursery, combined with laws offering parents greater flexibility at work, are genuinely progressive. None of these schemes attract headlines in even the most sympathetic newspapers.

Of course, not everything the government has done has been so praiseworthy. One notable flaw has been its paralysis over the failings of the housing market in recent years. The rises in house prices will, in the long run, lead to higher levels of inequality, permanently locking out those without a stake in the housing market. Also, many of the jobs created are low paid and insecure, and the minimum wage does little to help.

In their conclusion, Toynbee and Walker sketch out new values that could reinvigorate the welfare state. Instead of endless targets, and frustrating micromanagement, they believe that prioritising 'satisfaction' would help revitalise the public's jaded opinion of the public sector.

They point to Canada, where public services were given the single target of improving public satisfaction by ten per cent, "and they did, by focusing on what people appreciate most – politeness, promptness, never being passed from one official to another". This echoes a recent article by a Labour adviser, Richard Layard, in Prospect magazine, that public policy should focus more on 'happiness', rather than economic growth or efficiency.

As well as lacking a positive vision for its welfare reforms, the government's other main problems, and these are a constant theme throughout Toynbee and Walker's book, is its incoherence in policymaking and its inability to explain what it is doing. The introduction of the proposals for foundation hospitals, they note, was "ad hoc policymaking at its worst". We were to see the same panicky last-minute process over tuition fees, while the government's half-hearted attempts to reform the House of Lords have been incompetent at best.

Again and again, argue the authors, the government needlessly antagonised the public by failing to explain its policies, or providing a rational context for them. The row about fox hunting, they say, could have been easily averted if it had been put forward as "part of a wider scheme to 'modernise' the countryside, by making it a fit place for enjoyment by the townspeople who were, one way or another, paying for it".

And Blair's unwillingness to tackle entrenched interests – be it farmers, landowners, lorry drivers, business lobby groups or anti-European newspaper owners – stands in sharp contrast to his apparent eagerness to defy popular opinion over the war in Iraq.

However, maybe in an environment dominated by anti-politics, and pessimism about the possibilities of change, acting below the radar has some merit. Offering up a grand narrative, particularly one that focused on redistribution and social justice, might be a red rag to the hypocritical right-wing press, giving them easy targets. And, the government has not suffered too much from its "lack of a defining legend" – no other Labour government has had two full terms in power.

On the other hand, and as we can see from Labour's faltering polling figures, the government's failure to explain itself, to flesh out what it has been doing for the last eight years, may come back to haunt it. Toynbee and Walker believe that at the beginning of the second term, what was needed was "a galvanising, rallying progressive message that would make sense of what Labour was actually doing – taxing and spending, redistributing, investing in the NHS, schools and children like never before".

Toynbee and Walker write that their book "is not much about political ideologies"; instead, they say, "we have tried to keep our eyes on actual outcomes so far". After reading it, the first claim is clearly untrue; it is clear where the authors stand politically. They believe passionately that the UK needs a progressive centre-left government, and that a Tory government would be a disaster for the country.

But their analysis is not the worse for it. If you want an idea of what the government has done for the last four years, where it could, and should, improve, and why its supporters believe that it deserves a third term, read this book.