There was an uncompromising message for the growing numbers of his own Labor members of parliament unhappy with the direction that the party is taking under his leadership.

"This is no time to turn the clock back, no time to coast, no time to falter with the job only half done," Blair said.

Blair said he is "as committed, as optimistic, as determined today as I was in 1997 to see through the reforms that will make it happen."

Blair faces a difficult January, with a tricky House of Commons vote over extra charges for university students and the publication of a report by Lord Hutton into the apparent suicide of David Kelly, the government scientist.

But if the prime minister was feeling under pressure, he did not show it in his annual address, the newspaper said.