threshold of victory in a general election today.

Along the way, it jettisoned a hardline socialist agenda which split the party and plunged a strike-torn nation into economic crisis under the last Labour government in the 1970s.

Led by Welshman Neil Kinnock, 50, a coalminer's son who was once a left-winger but has mellowed into pragmatism, Labour is now a modern social democratic party promising to redistribute wealth within a market economy.

Accused of changing his principles as often as his suits, Kinnock took over in 1983 to frame policies to reach beyond Labour's declining power base among industrial workers and appeal to an expanding middle class.

He purged the militant left and tempered old idealism to get Labour to drop anti-Americanism and unilateral nuclear disarmament, stop preaching nationalisation and consent to curbs on trade union activity.

He says it was worth it. "I simply ask people to look at the record and to see a party brought back from the lip of oblivion eight years ago to the point where it is going to be the government of Britain.'' Kinnock has been ruthless in suppressing dissent and rooting out left-wing infiltrators of the Militant faction, losing two popular members of parliament in the process.

The 1980s were often frustrating for him, frozen out of power both by Labour's own divisions and the charisma of former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

She swept Labour out of office in 1979, trounced it again in 1983 and humiliated Kinnock in 1987 in the last general election.

But he stayed true to a pledge which he made when he succeeded leftist intellectual Michael Foot in 1983: "Unity is the price of victory.'' Labour believes it can now tap a "bedrock of compassion'' in Britain after years of free market Thatcherism when Kinnock says "selfishness was elevated into a code for government.'' The task Labour faced, Kinnock says, "was to clear away the inhibitions to voting Labour so people could connect their natural instincts up with our practical policies.'' Labour has the advantage that Thatcher's successor, John Major, presided over a bitter recession with unemployment spiralling to more than 2.6 million.

"If Labour cannot win when nearly everything seems to be going its way, it may never be able to win,'' the Independent newspaper said in a commentary.