BOSTON

AFTER MORE THAN a decade of conservative rule, the playbook for the election was a familiar one. The right’s candidate promised fiscal restraint and toughness on crime, hammering the liberal challenger with hard-hitting ads. It had worked before, but this year turned out to be different.

While polls showed that voters agreed on the importance of a healthy economy and safe streets, they had also lost patience with the incumbent party. The challenger offered a fresh face, an upbeat message, and just enough reassurance on economic concerns to earn a decisive victory.

Was this the story of Deval Patrick in 2006? Yes – but it also describes the ascension of Tony Blair in 1997. Britain’s Conservatives were evicted from 10 Downing St. in spite of a healthy economy and broad public support for much of their platform. The Economist wrote at the time, “It’s not Toryism that voters can’t stand. It’s the present Tory party.”

As with Kerry Healey’s attack-ad overkill, the Conservatives were faulted for posters that presented the Labour candidate as a red-eyed demon. The charming, wellspoken Blair convinced voters that “New” Labour would address social concerns without abandoning the Conservatives’ market-oriented reforms. As Governor Patrick confronts both his new job and the ghosts of fiscal crises past, he could learn from his charismatic counterpart.

Of course, history will judge Tony Blair on more than just his economic policies. Americans will remember him for supporting President Bush in Iraq, not for being the first prime minister to allow the Bank of England to independently set interest rates. And yet, the ordinariness of Blair’s centrism was a kind of revolution.

Just as our GOP has dredged up the Mike Dukakis bogeyman every four years, the Conservatives had long tarred Labour with memories of the strike-torn, stagnant 1970s. To reassure both citizens and businesses that Britain’s “winter of discontent” would never return, Prime Minister Blair insisted that New Labour put the entire nation’s economic health ahead of “old” Labour’s narrow, stifling factional agendas. The continued health of the British economy — especially in contrast to other European nations — confirms the wisdom of this approach.

Deval Patrick faces a comparable challenge. How can he satisfy the voters’ mandate for change, without fulfilling the GOP’s warnings about one-party rule? The solution may be hard to achieve, but it’s easily stated: Massachusetts wants a New Labour governor.

The voters may have rejected Kerry Healey; they did not reject fiscal restraint, responsible government, or the ongoing reform of education and other services. The voters have sent another Democrat to Beacon Hill; they have not endorsed every big-ticket item on every interest group’s agenda.

When told that taxes are “our money,” candidate Patrick reminded us that it’s also “our” schools and highways that need attention. It’s a good point, but Governor Patrick will soon find that “our” inflated Massport pensions and “our” excessive unemployment insurance costs and “our” exclusionary zoning and permitting laws will be defended by “his” interest-group supporters. When it’s time to close a loophole, open a charter school, or resist the demands of patronage, what will “our” governor do?

Unfortunately, his campaign trail eloquence doesn’t help answer that question.

“Together we can” do what, exactly? The governor’s old friend Bill Clinton might reply, “It depends on what your definition of ‘we’ is.”

Massachusetts elects Democrats to represent us in Washington, yet we’ve had four straight Republican governors. The only state in the nation whose laws prescribe both gay marriage and universal health care, we clearly value social tolerance and progressive reforms. Still, we remember the fiscal crisis of 1990, and are concerned about today’s languishing economy.

The new governor is reminded that most Massachusetts voters are independents; “together we can” elect a Democrat while expecting stable tax rates, balanced budgets, and a healthy business climate. 2006 was a Democratic victory, but this is a New Labour electorate.

In that spirit, Governor Patrick should consider what Tony Blair told The Guardian, on the eve of his election in 1997: “The greatest single danger in left-of-center politics is that you end up mistaking the politics of pressure groups for the politics of the people as a whole.”

Alan Petrillo is a consultant with the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research.