Not a surprise, though a somewhat greater avalanche than I had expected; it is a very romantic event, a sort of Magnificat of contemporary politics; the pebbles have been bouncing with the great boulders down the mountainside. I found Tennyson running through my mind as the results came in. "Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; ring out the false, ring in the true..."

It does not have to be New Year's Day to make In Memoriam seem so appropriate, but for many people this is a New Year's Day. It is the most revolutionary election result in British politics for 50 years; for Labour voters it is the fulfilment of a dream.

I was sceptical about much of the Labour campaign. I thought it would be successful, but I did not find the arguments convincing. Yet the scale of the victory, now that it can be seen as an event and not merely as a forecast, has created its own momentum; that puts an extraordinary pressure on Tony Blair himself. He has to justify the landslide. After 1906, Britain experienced the radical reforms of the Liberal government; after 1945, Britain had the socialism and welfare of the Attlee administration; after 1979, and 1983, Britain experienced Thatcherism. Only one great election victory, that of the National Government in 1931, failed to produce radical reform, and that was a victory of men who were either cold hearted or second rate, or both.

The other two great left-wing victories, like Franklin Roosevelt's US victory in 1932, were justified by great expansions of the power of the state; only Margaret Thatcher's election victories were justified by radical deregulation and privatisation. Tony Blair cannot justify his victory in the terms of tax and spend. If he does that, he and his party will be finished. He has won this majority by promising not to do so. Undoubtedly voters do hope that he can remodel Britain in the way he remodelled his own party. But the differences of new Labour are that Labour will not raise income tax, will not increase Tory spending plans, will privatise rather than nationalise, will not restore the old powers of the trade unions. Thatcherism is safe with new Labour; that is the core message.

Blair casts himself as EU president candidate

Speaking on French TV, Tony Blair sang the praises of the EU and sketched his agenda for its future, all in fluent French

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Background

• The past decade a disaster?

• All about Iraq? Don’t you believe it

• I’ll give Blair six and a half out of ten

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• Cherie Blair picture gallery

• Brookes on Blair

There is still the problem of Europe. Tony Blair will have one advantage John Major has never had. He has personally created Europe's largest political majority. The other European leaders saw John Major as a vulnerable politician. Tony Blair has immediately become the leading Social Democrat of the European Union, the only Social Democratic Prime Minister, apart from Signor Prodi, in the Big Five. It looks as though the Social Democrats may be gaining strength in Germany and France. The contrast between the Euro-federalist ambitions of the old men, Kohl and Chirac, and the British desire for a Europe of independent nations, remains. But the young man is politically very strong, and the old men are moving nearer to the end of their domination of European policy.

For the Tories it is a terrible defeat. It destroys, for the present, the whole structure of authority in their party. Who cares now about a Central Office which has suffered so massive a defeat? People will still respect John Major, but he is already a leader from the past. After such a defeat the party will have to reconsider its whole position, its leadership, its ideas, the very basis of its existence. It has to do what Labour has done since a comparable defeat in 1983. That was not just the work of Tony Blair, but of John Smith and Neil Kinnock before him. After that defeat it has taken Labour 14 years to regain office. In 1945, the Tory party was held together by the authority of Winston Churchill's leadership. Now the best advice one can offer is to give themselves time for the panic to subside.

For the moment it is the victory which matters. Tony Blair will have to be a great Prime Minister if he is not to be a great failure. He has reformed his party; he has won his overwhelming majority; now the most difficult part of his job is to come. The logical doubts still remain. He has never told us how he will reform wefare, how Labour can pay for health and education, or whether he will join the single currency. Failure is not only possible, but even likely.

"Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws." It will not work out like that, but we might as well savour the moment of magnificent opportunity that Tony Blair has created for himself.

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