Private Eye's "Vicar of St Albion's" is an unrepentant evangelical. Whosoever will may come to his Big Tent to hear the Gospel according to New Labour. Bring out your frail and hungry, your despairing and dispossessed, your socialists and free marketeers . . . not to mention any One Nation Tories in need of a new spiritual home.
Mr Blair was at it again yesterday, pitching for that landslide even as he vows apathy could yet see the Tories slip in by the back door. Lord Jenkins and Sir Edward Heath say Mr Hague's party requires defeat in order that the Conservatives be restored to the centre ground, from which subsequently they might help restore the balance of British politics.
Mr Blair on the other hand (like Mr Charles Kennedy) seems only too ready to push the Tories to the margins and, from there, right over the edge. True believers pray he really means to claim this as the century of the radical centre-left.
Moreover they contend, with much evidence around them, that the ideological differences between New Labourites and Old Tories are as great at this election as at any for many years past.
Mr Draper, former aide to the exiled Mr Mandelson, says Mr Hague's tax-cutting agenda forced Labour to come out unequivocally for spending and public services. The old preacher man from the Left, Brother Benn, claims the demand that those services be publicly financed, and issues such as the environment are now in the ascendant as the political pendulum swings back after years of deference to the god of market forces. Mr Blair's army of international backers, meanwhile, trusts he will lead a previously heretical nation to its destiny in a land called Europe.
Yet Mr Blair's Big Tent is also home to the most Eurosceptical of them all, born-again Thatcherites who still believe her legacy safe in his hands.
The curiosity of all this was laid bare again yesterday as the Times came out for the first time in favour of a Labour victory. It had felt unable to do so in 1997 because - while there was a powerful case for a change of government - it did not care for Labour's ambiguity on the single currency.
The danger it perceived was that an incoming government might call a snap referendum on the euro and, with an energetic drive, carry an uncertain public before it - with disastrous consequences for Britain.
However, the paper no longer senses such danger, having concluded "that for practical and political reasons a referendum is unlikely to be possible" during the next parliament. Even if that calculation proves wrong, the process of economic testing set down by Chancellor Brown would allow a reasonable time to elapse between the election and the referendum, and that, with national sentiment clearly established, the euro could be defeated in any plebiscite.
"If a referendum on the euro takes place, our voice against it will be vigorous and loud," vowed the Thunderer. That echoes the position of the paper's Murdoch stablemate, the Sun. The first British paper to declare for a Blair second term has warned Mr Blair of unrelenting opposition should he decide the economic tests met and opt for a referendum. And for all its reservations about the government's intentions across a range of domestic policies, the Times noted Labour's consolidation of many elements of Thatcherism in just four years.
The central question for this year was which of the parties "is more capable of making permanent the achievements of the 1980s and extending reform into areas which Lady Thatcher either neglected or did not recognise as consistent with the ideas she promoted elsewhere". Its conclusion: "Mr Blair, either out of conviction or fear that his proposed expenditure increases will be inadequate, is likely to blend Thatcherite means with social democratic ends in a manner which will benefit public services."
Some have mocked Lady Thatcher's return to the hustings but, almost 11 years after the fall, she is still exercising a profound influence on the British political debate.