THE MORAL OF THE STORY

By PAUL JOHNSON

The British people woke up on Friday morning to a different world. For the first time in two decades there will be a genuinely new government, led by a man of 43 who will be the youngest Prime Minister since the early 19th century and who, for the first time, will bring young children to 10 Downing Street. It will be touching and reassuring to see kids' bikes and cricket bats in the grim hall of that historic house.

They also woke up to a Labour majority of such a size--419 seats--that it should prove easy to push through Tony Blair's program of giving power to Scottish and Welsh assemblies and kicking the hereditary peers out of the House of Lords. It is the biggest Tory defeat in 165 years: half the government have lost their seats, the party is virtually leaderless, the succession is wide open, and the only Tory politician who is looking calm, secure and confident is Margaret Thatcher, who campaigned loyally for John Major but privately forecast his catastrophic defeat. She will again be the Tory queen, and the kingmaker in the succession struggle.

The new House of Commons will be much more hostile to European federalism; the campaign proved that the British people do not want a common currency or a European superstate. With a united party to back him, Blair ("I am a British patriot, first and foremost") will prove to be a much tougher proposition to Chancellor Kohl and President Chirac than the volatile and spineless Major. I said to Blair not long ago, "It may be your historic role to take Britain away from the European federation and towards a mere free-trade relationship." He replied, "I believe you may well be right."

At the same time, the masculine grip on the House of Commons has finally been broken. What a parliamentary diarist once called "this delicious male, tawny place" will echo to the tones of 150 women, including a 100-strong Labour contingent. Some of the most spectacular Tory defeats were the work of women candidates, and women will make up more than a quarter of the new government. Blair, who is married to one of the most successful young lawyers in Britain, has no problems about working with women. One of his closest confidantes is his personal secretary, Anji Hunter.

The new Blair world is also one in which Judeo-Christian values will flourish. The Major regime had a smack of agnosticism, even atheism, about it, and its endless sex scandals set a low moral tone for the nation. Blair is the first Prime Minister to be a regular Sunday churchgoer since the beginning of the century. What is perhaps more immediately important is that he considers his religious and his political values to be identical, believing that Christian convictions translate directly into politics. One of his chief aims will be to do all in his power to rebuild the family and to insist that state education, about which he cares most passionately, has a strong moral dimension. He is going to take the younger generation on a great experiment in moral education.

But Britain remains a profoundly conservative place, and the changes will not be overwhelming. This has been the most beautiful spring most people can ever remember, and in the dazzling sunshine the British electorate voted Labour into overwhelming power precisely because they knew it would be change without revolution. It was a happy vote, not a bitter one. The overwhelming sentiment was "Time for a change." This decisively outbalanced the "feel-good factor" produced by the fact that the country has the strongest economy in Europe--its best in 50 years--and most people have never earned so much.

Blair's historic achievement was to exorcise the voters' fear of Labour. They could put him in power confident in his pledges that taxes will not go up, spending will be kept in strict control, Thatcher's antiunion laws will remain in place, the privatization of Britain's state assets will continue, and socialism is dead, buried and forgotten. This was, in essence, a constitutional vote by the people to keep the two-party system alive, to insist that the other fellow be given a chance. It was a vote for fair play, balance, honesty, high seriousness and better ethical standards.

The euphoria will not last long. The great Labour landslide of 1945 petered out into hopeless crisis within two years. Labour's massive victory of 1966 ran into terminal troubles within three months. Today the economy is beginning to overheat, and interest rates will have to rise soon. The Tory party will get to its feet, dust itself off and be transformed into a ferocious opposition by the autumn.

The difference lies in leadership. Blair has been given a personal mandate of the kind Thatcher got in 1979. His mission is to make Britain a morally more acceptable place. He is a young man with impeccable ethical credentials, of great charm, terrific energy and optimism, and enormous will. He is going to take this old but still resourceful country on a new, romantic adventure that will be fascinating to watch. And even if it all ends in tears, the experience will be worth it.

Paul Johnson is a British historian and journalist.