THE announcement by the government today of more than 2,000 initiatives aimed at combating the winter crisis in the NHS may backfire politically. For these measures are not exactly new, but form the package put together with the £159 million given out in November by Chancellor Gordon Brown to help the health service through the winter months.

Yet, however valuable this help may be and however much Health Secretary Frank Dobson may stress it, the conclusion most people may reach is that it has not worked or has come too late.

For, in spite of it, the NHS has the winter crisis it was meant to prevent - with all the grim effects of patients piling up on trolleys in the corridors of swamped hospitals and operations being cancelled.

True, vicious circumstance in the form of a virulent flu epidemic, coupled with outbreaks of meningitis, has piled on the pressure this winter.

But even so, with such events being probable if not inevitable at winter time, the government, beset by this crisis, may be blamed for not doing enough soon enough - and may end up by fuelling this perception today by unintentionally emphasising the ineffectiveness of its relief measures. And, longer term, this apparent failure to do enough may harm Labour's reputation as the NHS's true champion if the perception grows that it is always engaged in an unavailing catching-up exercise to solve the NHS's problems.

For, this damaging winter beds crisis apart, it has the continuing battle with the waiting lists and the serious nursing shortage to deal with.

These are both problems it may have inherited but, at the last election, it was promising to solve them quickly.

The truth is, however, that even with prompt injections of resources and improved pay, it may be years before real results may occur.

There lies the danger for Labour - the spectre of perennial problems with the NHS, enhanced by crises like the one raging now.

If voters, especially the converts to New Labour, start to think that it is not doing enough for the cherished health service, it will suffer for it.

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