AFTER THE DULLEST campaign in living memory, why have I asked for extra space on this page today to present my final impressions about the election? And how on Earth can I imagine that readers, already bored out of their wits by the politicians, will have the patience to listen to what I have to say? The answer, leaving to one side the tempting illusions of journalistic vanity, is that this election has actually been much more surprising, interesting and important than the dinnerparty consensus would have you believe.

To see why this campaign has actually been far from boring, one has only to compare the expectations a month ago of a turnout even lower than the historic nadir of 59 per cent set at the last election, with the mood of the country today. The signs are that turnout will increase substantially, though not perhaps quite up to the 70 per cent benchmark which used to be considered a bare minimum for democratic legitimacy until the miserable contest of 2001.

More importantly, people seem to be thinking much more seriously about how they should be voting. Instead of shrugging their shoulders apathetically and either refusing to vote at all or planning to cast their ballots on whim, I hear people actively debating their voting options and arguing with their friends and families about what precise messages these options might send. I suspect that the exceptionally large proportion of voters who are telling pollsters that they could still change their minds today reflect some intense engagement and not just apathy or confusion, as is normally supposed.

So why have people been thinking harder than usual about how to vote in this election? Probably because the message they want to send is unusually complex.

Britain today is a generally prosperous nation, confident of its place in the world and tolerably well governed. Whether or not we credit Labour with these achievements or ascribe them mostly to the Conservative reforms under Margaret Thatcher, there is no overwhelming cause for dissatisfaction with the incumbent government or obvious reason to “throw the rascals out”.

Everyone, it is true, has serious complaints about Tony Blair and Labour. These range from the dismay among the upper middle classes over hunting, social engineering in university admissions and the erosion of Britain’s constitutional traditions and civil liberties, to the old Left’s horror over the Blair-Bush friendship, the refusal to raise income taxes and, of course, the war in Iraq. At a personal level, there is almost unanimous disgust with Tony Blair’s slickness and dishonesty, his fondness for “eye-catching initiatives”, his vanity, his preference for rhetoric over action and for form over content, going all the way back to the symbolic folly of the Millennium Dome. But such complaints do not amount to a programme for government, nor even a coherent critique of a government after eight years in power.

A coherent critique could have been offered, based on the ever-larger share of national income which will be diverted into government spending and taxes — and specifically into public health, education and pensions programmes — if policy continues on its present course. Some very big decisions will need to be taken in the years ahead, starting with the public spending review in 2008, about the long-term balance between the State and the private sector in Britain and the relative roles of taxpayers and consumers in financing health, education and pensions.

THE CONSERVATIVES — by deciding to match Labour’s plans for health and education, by offering almost no tax cuts, and by topping Labour spending promises on pensions — chose not to offer any genuine alternative to the Labour programme for an everexpanding state. They therefore forfeited the opportunity of being taken seriously as an alternative government, or of presenting the sort of fundamental critique of long-term prospects under Labour that might have tempted voters to eject the Government now “before it is too late”.

That is perhaps why the overwhelming sentiment among the voters in this election, reported by both canvassers and pollsters, has not been a desire to change the Government or even the Prime Minister, but to chastise them, to “give Blair a bloody nose”.

The question for voters has been how to achieve this result without doing too much collateral damage to their basic political interests and principles.

Until the start of the campaign a month ago, the answer seemed obvious: either not to vote at all (as in 2001) or to vote Tory or Liberal Democrat, safe in the knowledge that there were more than enough safe Labour seats and loyal Labour voters to keep the Government in power, albeit with a drastically reduced majority.

The really unexpected feature of this election is the degree to which the anti-Labour tactical thinking has been weakened by the campaign itself. While the opinion polls have moved only modestly during the campaigning, the move has been in favour of Labour and not, as was universally expected, against. Mr Blair is still unpopular and distrusted but, despite the stream of Iraq revelations, the bitterness and contempt seem to have lost their edge. Instead, much of the anger has been redirected: against the Tories if you are a Labour or Lib Dem supporter; against immigrants, criminals and Gypsies, if you are a follower of Michael Howard. Instead of becoming a referendum on the war, on the Prime Minister’s integrity, on Labour’s indifference to British traditions and civil liberties, on the size and power of the State, the election has focused as much on the character of the Opposition. When the campaigning started, Mr Blair was clearly the most unpopular public figure in Britain. Mr Howard’s extraordinary achievement was to build himself up into a politician the British people could dislike even more.

One of the fascinating ironies of this election, therefore, is that Labour’s recovery in the polls during the past month — a recovery which, if confirmed in today’s voting, will have far-reaching implications for British politics in the years ahead — was largely due to the viciousness and intensity of the Tories’ negative campaign. By banging on so relentlessly about the nastier aspects of life in modern Britain — lying politicians, illegal immigrants, vicious criminals — the Conservatives ironically deflected the anger which was previously focused largely on the Prime Minister on to all sorts of new targets, not least on to Mr Howard himself.

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