The old battle lines in British politics evaporated this week as MPs of all shades lined up to welcome the emergency capital injection into Britain's banks.
In 1983, Michael Foot - then Labour leader - was castigated for an election manifesto that included plans to nationalise part of the banking system. A Labour government, it pledged, would "stand ready to take one or more of them [banks] into public ownership". Sir Gerald Kaufman, then shadow cabinet member, dubbed the document the longest suicide note in history and it helped mark Mr Foot down as one of politics' greatest failures.
Until now. With financial markets crumbling, all three leading parties agree on the need for a big shake-up of the banking sector.
One of the oddest moments in a week that saw political compasses persistently reset came on Thursday as Peter Lilley, a right-wing Conservative, who in the 1980s co-founded the hardline "No Turning Back" group, gave his blessing.
"Members may find it slightly odd that I should support what is effectively partial nationalisation of the banks . . ." he said.
It is too early to apply that description to the £400bn bail-out, given that no bank has yet accepted government cash through the purchase of preference shares.
Along the corridors of the House of Commons, however, Labour MPs saw it in simple terms that reflected the totemic status this issue has long held within their party. Clause Four, drafted in 1917, promised to secure the workers the "full fruits of their industry" through the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Tony Blair's decision in 1994 to eliminate this wording from Labour's constitution, facing down bitter opposition from his party's "militant" leftwing, was the moment old Labour became New Labour.
The move was intended to signal that the party had shed its interventionist socialist roots and could be safely supported by middle England - which backed it in droves at the 1997 general election. Now, populism means decrying the "greedy spivs" who stoked the bubble. Angela Watkinson, a Tory MP, spoke of her "disgust" for bankers this week.
The new certainties mark a victory for those MPs who have seethed as New Labour embraced market forces.
Stephen Pound, MP for Ealing, was among those quick to recognise the implications of Wednesday's rescue package: "We have managed to do more than Lenin did in the timescale."
Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West, said it was time the government took a seat at the "casino of capitalism".
The joy was tempered only by fears that taxpayers' money could be wasted by the rescue scheme.
Sir Gerald - author of that famously pithy critique of Mr Foot's manifesto more than 25 years ago - said this week in the House of Commons: "Will my right honourable friend guarantee that the fat cats of the City of London will not be allowed to line their pockets on the backs of the profound concerns of tens of millions of our fellow citizens?"
In several debates, members nodded or cheered at the promise of state intervention, strict controls on bankers and the need for banks to keep on lending to ordinary folk. Only a handful asked more searching questions about how any of this would work in practice.
Curiously, it was left to Jeremy Browne of the Liberal Democrats, until recently regarded as the most leftwing mainstream party in the UK - to defend City bonuses.
"There may be circumstances [when] a . . . banker is so successful at turning round the fortunes of his bank . . . that that needs to be recognised. I am sorry if the Conservatives find that frighteningly rightwing."
As George Galloway, no stranger to political iconoclasm, put it: "When the Liberals sound like Labour and the Conservatives like communists, the kaleidoscope has definitely been shaken."
