Anyone who imagines that normal politics will be resumed after Diana's funeral on Saturday is in for a shock. Like a landscape stilled by lightning, the Britain revealed by the public response to her death appears sharp and unfamiliar to the eye.The country that has been disclosed by Diana's death is not new. It produced the electoral landslide of May 1st, but it has no yet been fully mapped. It is hugely at variance with the picture of a culture that is rooted in the past. It is not a country which reveres traditional values, still less does it defer to any authority which seeks to impose them. It has accepted the challenge of modern times, which is the opportunity to invent one's life for oneself, and its corollary, the obligation to show sympathy for those who come to grief through the absence of choice. It sees its own insecurities in the lives of those who have been excluded from the mainstream - gays, ethnic minorities, the homeless.It is a flawed country, but one in which cynicism about any kind of public action has not become an automatic reflex.In mourning the Princess of Wales, Britain honours the memory of someone whom circumstances forced to author her own life and who went on to claim that freedom for others. Is this the country whose prejudices tabloid newspapers are so anxious to flatter and politicians of all parties desperate to appease?That country no longer exists. Those who think they speak for it today are comic figures. Nicholas Soames's attack on the Princess of Wales two years ago, in which he described her during a television discussion as a woman exhibiting the advances symptoms of paranoia, was striking in its buffoonish insensitivity to the national mood.Doubtless Soames imagined that he articulated the unspoken prejudices of a silent majority, but the sentiments he expressed had long ago retreated to the fringes of British life. A silent majority existed in Britain, but it was instinctively liberal in most of its attitudes.The Conservatives' gawping incomprehension of the fears and aspirations of this liberal British majority cost them the election. Today they still appear resolute in their determination to occupy the impotent margins of British political life.William Hague's tribute to Diana, in which he managed to avoid any mention of her campaign on landmines - one of the causes on which her impact has been internationally acclaimed and may prove to be enduring - showed a misreading of national sentiment only a little less awe-inspiring than that of Nicholas Soames. It will be remembered as a defining moment in the demise of the Tories as a national party.Labour's strategy for ending 18 years in opposition was based on the premise that British political culture is incorrigibly conservative. There was a good deal in recent political history that supported this strategy.The Conservatives had lost the understanding of enduring human needs which made them the world's most successful political party. In their ranting evangelism for free markets, it had somehow escaped them that most people everywhere are intensely averse to economic risk.They scoffed at economic insecurity as an invention of the chattering classes. They disregarded mounting signs that they were perceived - not inaccurately - as a party ready to demolish trusted British institutions such as the NHS for the sake of an ephemeral economic dogma.Most Britons care more about securing the future for themselves and their families than they do about rising incomes or expanding consumer choice. They see the quality of public services as an index of civilised life. They believe that moderating economic insecurity is one of the core functions of government. In appealing to these decent conservative instincts, Labour was not only taking advantage of momentous political opportunity, it was responding to the neglect of vital human needs.Labour's immensely successful election strategy, however, has limitations if it is deployed as a basis for government. Britain today is not deeply committed to the institutions and values it inherits from the past. Except in regard to crime, where its concern with security leads to law and order attitudes, the British majority regards the assertion of authority with indifference, even suspicion.It wants to trust government, but only if it respects personal freedom and is consistently competent in furthering it.If policies promoting family values mean concern for the well being of children, they will have strong support. If they a re-run of Back into Basics, they will soon be an object of public ridicule. If the war on drugs attacks the despair which drives people to addiction, it will have some success. If it attempts to repeat in Britain policies which have already failed in the US, it will be a tragic failure.In these and other areas of policy, Labour had better get used to governing one of the world's most liberal countries.The public response to the death of Diana is not a fabrication of the media, it is a revelation of a new Britain. The Princess of Wales will be remembered as someone upon whom circumstances imposed the necessity of self-invention.Her frail and maimed spirit became strong by surviving the breakdown of an archaic marriage. Her death has disclosed a country that is already more modern than its politicians have yet understood.