I had more a mean field theory (reference is the one dimensional Ising model) in mind. You have your magnetic dipoles, and of course due to their thermal energy from time to time they flip, but due to the net magnetic field, caused by all the other magnetic dipoles, they stay much longer in the direction of the B field - and cause thereby on average a contribution to this B field keeping the other dipoles aligned.
For sue this, lets say piece of iron, was somewhere in the past magnetised externally. But the cause, that the iron remains magnetised is the reaction to all the other dipoles.

For explaining Tony Blair, I have actually another model, this time from economics. The situation is different, because Blair was already in the party, which was assumed to be better at those things you name a failure. Essentially people hadn't a real alternative at the ballot box - and turnout as well as labour's share of the vote were miserable, only order 15% of all possible voters did cast a vote for Blair, on this level Ahmadineshad of Iran can claim the same democratic legitimicy as Blair. In the US, there was a realistic alternative, which could be expected to be better, however little good this better might be assessed.

However, the model I wanted to lay out:
You have a beach, homogeniously populated, with two ice sellers, the rightwinger C and the leftwinger S. Where do they place themselves. To get about half of all people who do want to get an ice, both are somewhat close to the center, but there is some space between them, as they want to distinguish from each other.

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The elections are essentially decided by the people living between the two ice sellers.
So now comes Blair, and declares NewLabour (and Schroeder, declaring "Die Neue Mitte"). And they move the S somewhat to the right. So they will get all the vote left of them, which is more than before. If they are lucky, the rightwingers are going to keep some distance between themselves and the leftwingers, and move a bit right, too.

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That election is a save win, if not too many people on the left of the beach now say, if the ice seller is so far away, then they are not at all going to buy an ice. Sometimes of course unforeseen things happen, e.g. that a 3rd ice seller says, OK, now I have enough people there on the left side of the beach to open another shop.

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This is of course what happend to Schroeder and the SPD in Germany. But with a proportional representation election system and a party, which was already a major party in eastern Germany, it is much easier to that, than in a majority voting system, with no such party in place (assessing greens and liberals for several reasons standing at a different beach)

And yes, we in Europe might get bread and circus, but in the US I'm not sure, if they haven't somehow managed, to make only circus, but no bread.

Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den Menschen
Volker Pispers