The Progressive Labour Party, the seemingly eternal bridesmaid of Bermudian politics, at last got to the altar with the local electorate last night, scoring a handy -- and historic -- victory against the United Bermuda Party.

The two party platforms were much of a muchness, long on the usual array of vote-winning platitudes, very short on specific plans of action.

Neither hinted at any radical changes in Government direction. Rather, "steady-as-she-goes'' approaches were the centrepieces of both documents.

In terms of the economy, education and the environment, the troika of key issues the next Government must deal with, there was little to distinguish between the positions of the two parties.

What differences that did exist were ones of style, not substance. Both parties pledged to maintain the infrastructure that has produced the most dynamic economy in the world, parrying any intrusive thrusts made by either the European Union or the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development.

Both promised to prepare Bermudians to take their places in the new information- and technologically-driven economic order. Both committed to maintain the physical and human environment that makes Bermuda a choice location for both upmarket tourism and gilt-edged international businesses.

The UBP's political philosophy has always tended to be as laissez-faire as its economics. Subscribing to the credo that that government which governs best governs least, the UBP has nonetheless put into place a skein of safety nets -- ranging from education, to social assistance to universal health care -- to look after those unable to look after themselves.

The PLP, on the other hand, historically pushed platforms that amalgamated facets of 1950s post-colonial nationalism, what used to be called "Negritude'' in the '60s and shopworn socialist dogma that most left-wing parties dropped a decade or more ago in the name of self-preservation.

All that has changed, however.

The right-turns the PLP made in the run-up to yesterday's ballot were just the latest in a series of policy shifts the party has taken over the last 14 years to steer it toward the middle of the political road. Pragmatism, rather than stale polemics, is now the lodestar the PLP follows.

Indeed, at the end of the day it could be argued that Bermudians went into the 1998 General Election facing Hobson's Choice -- which, of course, is no real choice at all.

Be that as it may, neither the UBP nor PLP left anything to chance. They both launched promotional blitzes of staggering magnitudes. Given polls showed the undecided vote was negligible going into this election, it could be said that never has so much been spent on so many advertisements to change so few minds.

Alaska Hall, in particular, was concerned with getting the message out that the "New PLP'' bore as much resemblance to its '60s forerunner as Britain's "New Labour'' does to the trade union-trussed and strike-ridden Labour Party of the mid- to late-1970s.

This ideological trimming began in the mid-'80s after the PLP came close to electoral annihilation. Its extreme platform, already dangerously unsteady in the 1960s, had grown positively rotten in the wake of Sir John Swan's back-to-back triumphs in 1983 and 1985.

The seeds for the PLP's remarkable political resurrection were sown by the late Frederick Wade, who led the Opposition from 1985 until his sudden death two years ago in exceptional iron-hand-in-velvet-glove manner.

An unprepossessing man, Mr. Wade was neither an inspired speaker nor a particularly dynamic political presence. His elevation to the PLP leadership following the 1985 rout that left his party with a rump of just seven seats in Parliament prompted reactions that ranged from gratification to undisguised mirth in the UBP camp. Mr. Wade was widely painted as a passionless and pliable marionette by Chancery Lane, one whose strings it was assumed would be manipulated by former Opposition Leader Lois Browne Evans.

How wrong these predictions proved to be.

In fact, the PLP's only real hope for salvation lay with Mr. Wade. Any of the other potential leadership contenders would doubtless have just compounded the already portentous problems faced by the party. But possessed of the cunning and stealth of a grandmaster, the low-key Mr. Wade assiduously set about reworking the Bermudian political chessboard to the PLP's advantage. Nobody in the UBP paid any attention -- at least not until the 1989 election, when the PLP more than doubled its Parliamentary representation. Going from just seven seats to 15 after running an unexceptional campaign compared to the son et lumiere extravaganza mounted by the UBP, the result redrew Bermuda's political map overnight.

Mr. Wade emerged as the PLP's answer to a force majeure -- an all-but irresistible powerhouse whose docile exterior disguised a computer-like brain and a backbone of tempered steel.

Having reestablished the PLP as a major player on the Bermudian political stage, Mr. Wade spent the next four years working resolutely to have it assume the lead role rather than continue in the supporting part it had been playing since 1963.

He almost succeeded.

Between 1989 and 1993, the PLP embarked on an extended period of house-cleaning. The PLP began to take a more measured approach to the teapot-tempests that pass for informed debate in Bermudian politics. It is true, as one British constitutional pundit put it, that an Opposition's role is to oppose everything and propose nothing. However, the nonstop naysaying, muck-raking and hectoring the PLP had indulged in since its formation had done precisely nothing to position it as a credible alternative to the UBP.

Consequently Mr. Wade insisted that those bulls-in-search-of-china-stores who sat on his benches draw in their horns forthwith. Far more import was placed on strategy and organisation, far less on rhetorical fireworks.

The net result was that the PLP began to steal a march on the UBP for the first time in its history.

Come the 1993 General Election Mr. Wade almost succeeded in having the PLP move from the Opposition to the Government benches. The result was 22-18 to the UBP but in terms of the popular vote the outcome was a statistical dead-heat.

Sir John Swan's unparalleled cross-over appeal, charisma and previously reliable political instincts had all apparently failed him. For the first time, political momentum -- what George Bush used to refer to in his syntax-shattering style as "The Big Mo'' -- had clearly swung to the PLP.

Drastic measures were called for.

A dispirited and despondent UBP needed to seize on an issue that would simultaneously fire Bermudians' imaginations and broaden a waning political support-base. The 1993 ballot had been such a close-run thing it led directly to the biggest gamble of Sir John's political career.

The issue Sir John and his kitchen cabinet ultimately settled on to try and resuscitate the party's fortunes was, to say the least, surprising.

Independence -- the dreaded "I'' word of Bermudian politics -- had rated nary a mention in the 1993 campaign. Yet scarcely had the last ballot been counted than the UBP embarked on a full-frontal Independence campaign of its own.

Taking the motto of Britain's elite Special Air Services -- "Who Dares Wins'' -- as their own, Sir John and his inner-circle launched headlong into their audacious programme.

There was method in what appeared to be an exercise in political madness. His reasoning was threefold.

First, by stepping into the political briar patch and seizing the nettle of Independence, Sir John believed he would rob the PLP of one of its most important articles of faith (albeit a largely unspoken one in recent years).

Secondly, the spin-off effect from such a bold move would draw more black voters under the UBP umbrella because of the widespread belief that extensive -- albeit tacit -- support for Independence existed in that community.

And, thirdly, the UBP's core support base of conservative blacks and whites would reluctantly go along with Sir John's programme based on the "better-the-devil-you-know-than-the-devil-you-don't'' theory as applied to Independence.

On paper, the then Premier's logic was incontestable. In practice, things didn't work out that way.

Opposition Leader Frederick Wade was not prepared to stand idly by and watch Sir John Swan pilfer not only his platform but his supporters. From the outset, the PLP asked its backers to boycott the Independence referendum -- a call they answered in the main. Mr. Wade thus obliterated the first two objectives on the Cabinet Office agenda. And as far as the third aim was concerned, UBP voters decided the Premier had made them a Mafia-style, gun-to-the-head offer they couldn't refuse regarding Independence.

But they did refuse. In droves.

The Independence debacle immediately created a deep schism in the UBP's Parliamentary ranks, with six MPs fighting the issue -- and by extension their Premier -- until they were red in tooth and claw.

Voted down by a three-to-one margin at an August, 1995 referendum, that was the end of the Independence initiative. It was also the end of Sir John's career as Premier.

However, before the dust could settle from either the Independence ructions or Sir John's resignation, the UBP immediately embarked on another round of self-inflicted bloodletting. Jim Woolridge -- unofficial leader of the anti-Independence coaltion -- seemed the natural successor to Sir John. But the UBP Parliamentary cadre instead plumped for technocratic Finance Minister Dr. David Saul in what amounted to a wholesale repudiation of the electorate's wishes.

Harry Viera described the vote for Dr. Saul as "an exercise in pornocracy'' -- literally "rule by harlots'' -- rather than democracy.

This piquant sentiment was shared by more than a few in the UBP camp.

No sooner had he been sworn in than Dr. Saul was confronted with a crisis that ultimately destroyed his Premiership. From the start his leadershop was eclipsed by a shadow in the shape of McDonald's M-shaped Golden Arches logo.

Five of the six anti-Independence Parliamentarians embarked on a new campaign to kill a plan floated by Sir John Swan and Maxwell Burgess to introduce the franchise to Bermuda. Although legally correct, Finance Minister Dr. Grant Gibbons' provisional go-ahead for the scheme was seen as a moral about-face by a Government that had blocked all previous attempts to introduce fast food since Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its doors.

The ensuing battle of the burger brought Government business to a virtual standstill for 18 months. More adept at adding up columns of numbers than restoring equilibrium to a perilously off-kilter political party, Dr. Saul became the fall-guy for a situation not entirely of his own making.

Ultimately, with the "Gang of Five'' joining the PLP, Parliament censured Dr.

Saul in the first vote of its kind in the Westminster system since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was rebuked by the House of Commons in 1940 for his handling of the Second World War.

As was also the case with Chamberlain, Dr. Saul was soon forced from office.

Like his Biblical namesake, the Premier fell upon his own sword and perished.

The UBP was in such disarray at this point it seemed the time had come to bring the curtain down on what had deteriorated into an increasingly frenetic political farce. The years between 1993 and 1997 were locust years for the UBP -- "the years the locusts hath eaten.'' Then Pamela Gordon succeeded David Saul as Premier. Famously dismissed by Dale Butler as a "beauty queen'', she soon demonstrated her mettle when faced with a catastrophe that would have tried both the patience and resolve of a far more experienced leader. When the drug-busting Operation Cleansweep caught up Environment Minister John Irving Pearman, Police Commissioner Colin Coxall and Public Safety Minister Quinton Edness in its dragnet, the Premier handled the ensuing uproar with a maturity that belied her limited track record.

This public blooding demonstrated in the most dramatic fashion imaginable that Bermuda's new Premier was made of very stern stuff.

Meanwhile the PLP's seemingly inexorable progress towards the Government benches suffered a series of setbacks. The sudden death of Mr. Wade threatened to derail the reform process he had put into place. Like some sort of secular Moses, he had seen the political Promised Land but not lived long enough to enter it. And without him at the helm, there seemed some genuine doubt as to whether the party could now achieve the goal Mr. Wade had set for it.

Although the personable Jennifer Smith succeeded Mr. Wade as Opposition Leader, she twice had to fend off strong challenges from the more radical Alex Scott. Although the PLP has been far more adept recently at camouflaging internal discord than the UBP, it was apparent in the wake of Mr. Wade's death that Alaska Hall was a house divided against itself in terms of philosophy.

Then there was the ongoing furore over Dr. Ewart Brown's eligibility to sit in Parliament, a dilemma only solved at the next-to-last minute when he renounced his US citizenship.

There were also the legal difficulties faced by Hamilton East MP Trevor Woolridge, who first resigned the PLP whip and then his Parliamentary seat.

There was a sterling-silver lining in this otherwise grey cloud for the PLP.

Alaska Hall was able to turn the by-election forced by Mr. Woolridge's resignation into a dry-run for the General Election.

The outstanding organisation so apparent in the lead-up to that ballot was in evidence again yesterday throughout the Island. The PLP not only got its voters motivated, it got them to the polling stations in record numbers.

This new-found discipline -- combined with Frederick Wade's extraordinary strategic planning and a slew of UBP missteps Pamela Gordon could not erase from the electorate's memory during her 18 months in office -- is how the PLP made it happen.

Mr. Wade: Grand strategy for PLP