Betting on Blair.

Ladbrokes, the grand British bookie, took the unprecedented step of paying out winnings before a race was even over. The race in question was the British general election, in which a landslide for Tony Blair's "New Labour" government was so taken for granted that betting on it counted as a sure thing. Still more remarkably, the focus of interest for public and pundits was not the New Labour thoroughbred cantering toward a comfortable triumph but the battered old Tory nag struggling to stay in second place with about 30 percent of the popular vote in the final pre-election polls. As Matthew Parris of the London Times pointed out, people were voting for a government they do not love in part because they want to inflict a second catastrophic defeat on a Tory opposition they seemingly despise.

The main result of this is likely to be a very short honeymoon for Blair, as the electorate, having indulged its anti-Tory spleen, wakes up to realize that it still has long waiting lines for surgery, declining educational services, the prospect of absorption into a European federal state, and a government that prefers public-relations "spin" to public debate over its policies.

For the moment, however, it is the Tories' plight that invites analysis. "They're out of the mainstream on the euro," claim the government, the Brussels bureaucrats, and the dwindling band of left- wing Europhiliac Tories. Unfortunately for this argument, both the opinion polls and the experience of doorstep canvassers make plain that keeping the pound is almost the only popular policy the Tories have. "William Hague is bitterly disliked by the voters-he looks like a fetus in a suit; he's too elitist; he's too short" goes another argument from, among others, supporters of rivals for his Tory leader's job. Polls suggest there's something in this argument, but one suspects Hague is more a scapegoat for anti-Tory animus than its cause.

The Tories have never been loved. They are the party that specializes in telling unpleasant truths and dealing with intractable problems. In the last 100 years, they have been brought into office to deal with grave national crises four times; they have entered government from opposition amid tranquillity only once.

Two obstacles prevent them from playing their accustomed role today. First, the Tories lost their reputation for economic competence under John Major when they inflicted a recession on the British economy by sticking rigidly to a fixed European exchange rate (a sort of precursor to the euro), were humiliatingly forced out of it by the currency markets on "Black Wednesday," and were accordingly unable to gain credit from the economic boom that followed this financial liberation. Second, that boom continues today. So there is no grave crisis for them to solve.

Another crisis will surely come along-perhaps a replay of Black Wednesday if Britain joins the euro. When it does, Labour will lose its recent reputation for competence. And the Tories will again be available to restore the family finances. Until then, bet on Blair.