This week the nation reaffirmed that intent, albeit yawning on the way to the polls. The world is not saved, but never mind. The goodwill and generosity of the nation remains enormous. It wants hospitals for the ill, schools for the children and a decent life for the old. That's what the parties campaigned about, that's what the electorate voted for. Providing for the young, the sick and the old is what government today, in the public mind, is all about. Forget self-interest, the people are happy to work from January to May to pay their taxes to help others, and only the rest of the year for themselves. My, we're nice. We're also gullible.
In May 1997 I had this to say about the defeated Tories. "They talked to us as if we were children. They told us what is good for us. They interfered with our freedoms. They logged us and examined us and told us where we were wanting. They assumed we all live in the same way and want the same thing. They dared to castigate single mothers. They encouraged us to abort our children in the short term to save NHS money in the long term, and didn't tell us. They made us eat infected meat to save a scandal and shouldn't have. They planned impossible and grandiose millennium projects. They burned money up in fireworks, they sold the family silver. It's easy to hate them."
So what changed? Precious little. Except we don't hate Labour. Once in power, Labour took up the Tory baton and ran with it, and when it came to it we didn't mind a bit. So our freedoms are yet more constricted - political correctness runs riot, CCTV cameras oversee our every move - our children are the most examined in the world and reared to be little office workers, the morning-after pill today saves the NHS money tomorrow, so what? Single mothers are traduced, for BSE read foot-and-mouth, the grandiose and impossible millennium projects continued with knobs on, the fireworks turned into damp squibs (is that millennium bridge still closed?), and Gordon Brown hoards the family silver. But still we love them.
Sure, the Labour party irritated us once - those bland voices, the obedient Babes (what happened to them?), Millbank's early, creepy attempts to silence the press, the fawning, the adulation and the new cool Britannia embarrassment. But weren't we trying to build a new Jerusalem? And all that was New Labour's doing, anyway, some other party long ago.
We love Gordon with his glittery eye, his fierce paternal stare, we love the way Tony puts his foot in it but comes up smiling, we even love Robin Cook (he must be so sexy). We love them because of the way they care about us, the people. Or say they do. And if the birth rate plummets and Coca-Cola ads - which in 1977 were aspirational, showing happy families and healthy youngsters - now portray the jaded young and the disreputable old as role models, who cares? Still we love Labour.
We love them because they are celebrities and our media have turned them into such: they are the new royal family and we love the scandals. We love baby Leo and Tony's mad, defiant way of having his holidays in the wrong places and sending his children to fee-paying schools. We loved gruff Gordon's marriage. We were shocked by Hamilton and the alleged brown-envelope sleaze; but we have forgotten how to be shocked - we rather admire Labour ministers cruising in Clapham Common and Mr Vaz suspected of selling titles and citizenships. What a hoot!
We know perfectly well, as the Tories keep reminding us, that the minute this election is over all kinds of things are going to happen. The hospitals and the schools will be privatised, the army will be all but disbanded (the theory being that all the world is as ethical as we are and who needs an army anyway?), the countryside turned into a theme park, the farmers become as much a memory as the miners, the press will be terrorised or bribed into concurrence, parliament will increasingly be sidelined, MPs turned into social workers, and parliamentary committees packed by friends. We know that the independence of the judiciary will increasingly be undermined by the Home Office. We know that we will vote against the euro - our last act of defiance - and that the vote will somehow or other be overlooked and we will go ahead anyway. We will be dismantled as a nation and turned into a powerful northern consuming force, and do you know what, we don't care. We're happy.
Labour will look after us. The press will entertain us and create a stream of near-nude celebrities for us to admire. Red-faced gentry on horseback might even be stopped from galloping after foxes.
The nation has turned its back not just on the me generation, but on democracy itself. It prefers a one-party state. It sees no virtue in the old confrontational government; it wants useful edicts to stream from the wisdom on high. Which is just as well, because when Britain goes into Europe, where Blair will surely lead us, this is what we will have and democracy will feel like a blast from the past. We will have no political party to landslide out of existence if we feel like it: we will have rule by civil servants unobserved and far away. That's okay, says the electorate, fine by us, just leave us to get on with our careers, our lifestyles and our love lives in peace. This is the new world.
In another five years (God willing) I will look back on what I have just written and see how far prophecy got me. The world is full of surprises and the unforeseen - barring, that is, the results of this election just past.
Useful links
Results
Ask Aristotle about your constituency
Talk about it
Who should lead the Tories? Should Hague have quit?
Video
See Hague make his resignation statement
Election headlines
Triumphant Blair reshuffles cabinet
Hague: I quit
Comment and analysis
George Monbiot: Labour's victory rings hollow
Austen Chamberlain: history's first Hague
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