Tony Blair has appealed to women voters to give the government the benefit of the doubt at the next general election.

Grilled by a group female voters on Sunday he said his record deserved credit, even if it had not lived up to all the expectations created by his landslide 1997 election victory.

Interviewed on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, the prime minister said: "It is very hard when you come in after 18 years in opposition and people have this tremendous sense that everything suddenly is going to be put right.

"I suppose we, even me myself, were sort of swept along with that. I just hope in 2005 if you do a balance sheet it is not all bad.

"Some things I hope are better. I think the economy is stronger. There are things like unemployment that we don't talk about any more.

"I think it is in the nature of the job that I do that no one's expectations are ever completely fulfilled, including my own. But I do hope the country is a better country than it was in 1997."

Poll

The television appearance came as a new poll showed a growing number of women are unhappy with his performance in Number 10.

The ICM survey for the News of the World found that between 1997, 2001 and now, more females think Blair is "arrogant", while less believe he is "honest", "understands their concerns" and "has lots of personality".

However the number feeling he "has more style than substance" has gone down since the 2001 election and the Iraq war.

On the Dimbleby programme, Blair again refused to apologise for taking the country to war on the basis of flawed intelligence, despite one woman saying it would make the difference between her voting Labour and not.

"The truth is I believe I did the right thing," he said. "I have said to people I am sorry that the intelligence that was put in front of you in certain respects turned out to be untrue.

"I won't say sorry for misleading you because I don't believe I did," he added.

"I have apologised for the intelligence being flawed although I honestly represented the intelligence to people that we had at the time. The intelligence we gave people was the intelligence we had."