One of this century's defining transformations has been in the semantics of socialism. The Edenic alternative of the programmed man has been downsized into a marketplace of individual choice. And ideology has no hiding place except the Jurassic remoteness of the tropical communist. The political genealogy of the New Age socialist can no longer be traced to the Bolshevik fantasy. He is the redeemer reconstructed in the laboratory of virtual salvation. In his image merge the fear of God and the wisdom of Adam Smith, the triumph of the market and the compassion of the community. He is the capitalist with a gentle smile. He is Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. The socialist whose gospel has resulted in a tectonic shift in British politics.

Today, at the end of the long Tory night of 18 years, Blair, as the leader of the triumphant New Labour, epitomises the New-Right soul of the New Labour. As much as the devastated John Major symbolises the squandered spirit of conservatism. For the Labour landslide, coming as it does in the high noon of British economy, is an essay in the political viability of the idea thief. In a totally Thatcherised Britain, Blair presented himself as a trust-me man of tomorrow whereas Major, an emollient weakling, personified the grey stagnation of Thatcherism. It was a classic case of the leader of the `vision thing' capturing the winning vital centre as the non-leader, a perpetual ditherer, ejected himself to the periphery of his own inheritance.

After all, in most of the two-party democracies, elections are won by the leader who understands the zeitgeist. Blairism is benevolent Thatcherism. Economically, Thatcherite Britain is irreversible. Blair's Labour, a far cry from the utopian Clause IV party of ```common ownership'', has not only accepted the redundancy of welfare rhetoric but endorsed the virtues of free market and fiscal responsibility. From privatisation to the tyranny of trade unionism, Blairism never threatened the temples of Thatcherite radicalism. Rather, to the Lady's ```no such thing as society'', Blair added a dash of the trendy sociology of communitarianism. While Blair was emerging as the chosen leader of nirvana, Major, whose election as the successor of Lady Thatcher was entirely accidental and based less on his leadership qualities, was slowly fading out. Civil war in the party over Europe; a thin parliamentary majority; sex and sleaze in the Tory backyard -- Major was presiding over a party at war with itself. Survival was the abiding leitmotif of his premiership. If the Lady treated the Conservative party as a party of permanent cultural revolution, her one-time protege reduced it to a feeble vehicle of continuity and stability. If the Lady was a warrior, Major was a gentle healer. In retrospect, his gentleness seems like the suicidal charm of a non-leader.

It was in such a scenario that the Thatcher-than-thou onslaught of the New Labour leader conquered the unguarded conservative plank from the Tories. The Labourite promises on ``enlightened self-interest'' and constitutional reforms will of course test the winner's trust-me credibility. But such fears should be misplaced considering the enormity of the mandate. For, the implosion of Torydom only heralded designer conservatism with a socialist price tag. Funny, on the eve of the third millennium, salvation's most beguiling recipe comes from the radical who has so effortlessly moved from the left to the centre -- that too without the baggage of ideology but with the backpack of pilfered ideas.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.