On Thursday night Tony Blair gave a speech to a big, old-fashioned Labour party rally in Scotland. He bounced on to the stage to applause that was warmly polite rather than enthusiastic, but bounced off 40 minutes later to a whistling, foot-stamping ovation that was still echoing in his ears as his motorcade headed for Edinburgh airport. Little of this was reported in Fridays London press, and even less was shown on television. But to those of us who were present it was a brief reminder that this curiously flat election needn't be just about sound-bites and photo-opportunities.

What had Mr Blair done to raise the emotional temperature? Two things. First, he had put on a bravura oratorical performance, stepping away from the podium speaking directly to his audience, passionately and without notes, in a style that was reminiscent of newsreel footage of Lloyd George (am impression reinforced when the Labour leaders microphone failed and he had to fill the 2,000-sear hall with the power of his own lungs).

Secondly, and more importantly, the quality of his content had at last caught up with the panache of his delivery. The fashionable view- articulated yet again this week by "Labour's intellectuals" in The Spectator - is that there is nothing now to choose between the two big parties. But as Blair listed his promises- to end the internal market in the NHS, to sign up to the social chapter, to introduce a minimum wage, to set up a Scottish parliament, to reform the House of Lords to hold a referendum on the constitution - one could feel the faithful being almost physically jerked out of the torpor this long campaign has induced. "Hold on," you could see them thinking, "this is actually quiet radical stuff."

Look at the difference between us and our opponents, pleased Blair: Look at all the things that won't happen if the Tories are defeated. There won't be a grammar school (and, by implication, three or four secondary moderns) in every town. Pensions won't be privatised. The tax system won't be further skewed to help the better-off through the abolition of inheritance and capital gains taxes. The country won't continue its dismiss drift towards the edge of Europe. And there won't for that matter, be a new £60m royal yacht - because, said Blair, the country had more important things to spend its money on.

True, none of this exactly adds up to a New Jerusalem. Income tax levels and overall public spending won't rise under Labour and the Thatcherite trade union laws will remain on the statute book. Take these big issues away, say Mr Blair's left-wing critics, and all that Labour promises is just changes at the margins. Perhaps. But what Margins! Social policy, foreign policy and the entire British constitution: that is a pretty wide area of margin by anybody's standards.

Labour's intellectuals are wrong to belittle this election. They are missing the point. We are living through a revolutionary time. That it does not feel revolutionary is in large part because neither Labour nor the Tories wishes to dare the 100,000 or so floating voters in the key marginal seats who, they reckon, will determine the outcome of the poll. So a kind of mutually convenient fog of dullness has been allowed to settle over the battlefield. Labour stresses continuity and reassurance, and so, in their own way, do the Tories.

But Britain is going to be a very different country after May 1, whatever happens. If Blair wins, his government will embark on the most ambitious programme of constitutional reform we have experienced since the 19th century. The psychological shock of seeing a non-Tory administration in day to day control will be profound. And Mr Blair does not plan just to sit around contemplating his majority. His intention is to hold out a hand not merely to the Liberals but also to centrist Tories and to business leaders who are scared of the Tories' increasing Europhobia. This may sound far fetched. Perhaps it will all come to nothing. But as a vision of change, in the context of Britain's placid democracy, "revolutionary" is the word. The structural reforms which Blair has made to his party have a logic to them, he believes, which can now be applied to the entire British polity, as the Tory party breaks into civil war.

And if, by some miracle, John Major confounds the polls once again, and secures a fifth Conservative term, that, too, will be a revolution - perhaps an even greater one than if Labour wins. Again, like Mr Blair, the prime minister has spent much of his campaign emphasising stability and trust: "You can only be sure with the Conservatives" is the title of the manifesto. But that is precisely what we cannot be. The upsurge in the strength of the Eurosceptics over the past couple of weeks means they would be much more powerful in any future Major government. Indeed, a mandate for the Tories on May 1 would, with some justice, be seen by the Eurosceptics as their mandate rather than his. With Labour shattered by defeat, the way would be open for an utterly different kind of Britain, Soon to be led by - I would guess an utterly different prime minister.

So the stakes could scarcely go higher and the point of decision is almost upon us. Polling is just 11 days away. But what at this historical juncture, do "Labour's intellectuals" have to say on the matter?

Nothing of the slightest importance, if their comments in The Spectator are anything to go by. "New Labour represents an historic defeat for the British left", moans Martin Jacques, former editor of Marxism Today. "Blair is a minor public schoolboy without the self-confidence of an old Etonian." (Now there speaks a Marxist today.) "I have just about had it with New Labour," complains Professor Bernard Crick. "It has failed to find a public rhetoric of reform for creating a more democratic society with an increasingly active citizenship." There is much more in the same vein.

This is the kind of flatulent jargon that gives political philosophy a bad name. Blair and his entourage, after a brief attempt last year to court the left-wing academics and thinkers, are now said to have given up on the lot of them, and who can blame them?

The intellectual left have failed to grasp the importance of this election. They have failed to come up with any coherent ideas of their own. They have failed to do anything, in fact, except moan - a skill at which they are well practised. They moaned about Callaghan, Foot, Kinnock and Smith. They moaned about Thatcher. They moan about Major. And now they are moaning about Blair.

What is it about the left, I wonder? The nearer victory comes, the more contemptuous of it they seem to be. It's almost as if they prefer losing. It used to be said of Austen Chamberlain: "He always played the game. And always lost." That is the sort of Labour Party that Bernard Cricks of this world really want: one that endlessly plays the game and endlessly loses sparing them the odium that comes from making the real decisions - and inevitable compromises - of partisan politics.

In this they form, albeit inadvertently, a kind of Tory fifth column, for they lend succour to the view that if this election isn't really going to change anything, there's logically no point in bothering to turn out to vote. This is the defeatism which is fast becoming the Conservatives' best hope: that both parties are just assemblies of devils you know. It is no coincidence that the people who are praying most earnestly for a low turnout all work in Central Office.

It shouldn't happen. This is a revolutionary election. The problem is that it's a revolution being smothered by soundbites and cynicism. Mr Blair should take note of his reception in Scotland and start making similar speeches south of the border. He will rattle the right. He will astonish the left. More importantly, he will set this dull campaign alight.