So Obama is in – what is our agenda for change now?
The American election has held us all entranced. But now its over, what happens next?
We will be trying to take stock of this extraordinary week in politics tomorrow with our Fabian conference America Votes, Europe Responds at Westminster Central Hall. It is a good moment to be meeting in the very same building that hosted the first ever meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in January 1946. Can we make sure we are actors, and not just spectators, in the search for the new multilateralism our age needs and a progressive politics of hope and change?
Race in British politics: reasons to be cheerful
When will we see a British Obama in 10 Downing Street? The story of race in Britain – how the rise and fall of Empire transformed the society we have become – is different to America’s history of slavery, segregation and the long march to civil rights.
As Obama’s election throws the spotlight on progress here, we should challenge the ‘only in America’ idea put forward by KA Dilday in his correspondence with Anthony Barnett on OpenDemocracy. An Obama – like a Thatcher – can be a once in a lifetime strike of political lightning.
But the chances of a British Obama are improving fast. That challenges the gloomy conventional wisdom about diversity in British politics. Twenty years after the first four black and Asian MPs were elected, there are only 15 non-white MPs in the House of Commons: there would be 60 if the House of Commons had a similar ethnic mix to the country as a whole. Those figures do show that it has been harder for black and Asian citizens to get into Parliament.
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Sunny’s report from the fringe: on class and culture
Can the left ever become populist again?
‘Can we give the white working classes what they want’? was the question posed by a Fabian Society fringe event yesterday at the Labour party conference. I was asked to speak and I’ll post my short speech on my blog later.
The debate, unsurprisingly, focused very much on the economic deprivation and lack of opportunities that many white working classes face in communities across the country. I have much respect for some of the speakers – Jon Cruddas MP, John Denham (minister for innovation and skills) and Jon Tricketts MP, who complained that the working classes as a whole were being ignored by the Labour party.
Why Europe’s left can rise again
“They Only Look Dead” was the title of leading US political commentator EJ Dionne’s excellent book – published at the height of the Newt Gingrich revoution – to argue the counter-intuitive thesis ’Why progressives will dominate the next political era’, arguing that the populist and polarising anti-government fervour of the US right misread the mood of America.
Very few political observers thought that Bill Clinton could recover from the crushing defeat of the 1994 mid-term elections, when he had to argue that the Presidency was “still relevant” to win at a canter in 1996. But Dionne’s was a longer-term analysis, which he reflected on in an essay last year on The Liberal Moment, and the possibilities and tensions for hopes of a new progressive era in the US.
In next week’s Newsweek magazine, I set out an argument as to ‘why Europe’s left will rise again’.
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What do the Eurosceptic Tories want?
Valery Giscard d’Estaing – who left the Elysee Palace in 1981 – was always an odd choice to Chair the Convention on the future of Europe, which eventually produced the document formerly known as the Constitutional Treaty.
Now, the Grand Old Man of a United Europe has been breaking bread with the Tory ’sceptics’ at a conference sponsored by the Daily Telegraph. And his argument that Britain can have a “special status” (where Britain is allowed to opt out of future Treaties) seems to have cheered them up.
Well, almost. John Redwood thinks its just a clever trap to suck Britain in, while leading sceptic MEP Dan Hannan would prefer Britain to take a similar ‘special status’ outside the EU to … err … Switzerland.
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In Germany, something else is happening
The long running party leadership issue has finally been resolved, with beleaguered Social Democratic party leader Kurt Beck acknowledging that he will not lead the party in a General Election next year. SPD leaders have anointed Frank-Walter Steinmeier as the party’s Chancellor-candidate to take on Angela Merkel, through a coronation rather than a contest.
The move was announced at a party meeting on Sunday at Lake Schwielowsee to agree the election platform.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier was one of the key architects of the Gerhard Schroeder Agenda 2010 reforms. He is currently Deputy Chancellor and Foreign Minister. On the centre-right of the party, he has the respect and stature to be a unity candidate.
In some ways, the challenges for the German Social Democrats parallel those for Labour in Britain.
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What is ‘uber-Blairism’ anyway?
Charles Clarke upset a lot of people in his own party yesterday. Clarke’s New Statesman piece ended with a veiled threat, but it was pretty clear unveiled in his Today programme interview this morning. But, as Clarke admitted, the real meaning was that the Cabinet does not agree with him that Brown must go. The pre-conference coup is off. I wrote more about this at Comment is Free yesterday.
Clarke is fundamentally right about one thing: Blairism is over – and throwing around labels of Blairite and Brownite misses the point.
But let me enter a caveat. I am not happy to entirely let go of the useful term ‘uber-Blairite’ does describe a particular view within the party – even if it is necessary to hunt pretty hard to find anybody who holds it.
There are two possible definitions.
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Does Obama want a nuclear free world?
Perhaps the most striking passage in Barack Obama’s Berlin speech was the prominence he gave to his call for the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.
This will sound radical to American and to European ears, perhaps especially in Britain.
I can not imagine a British Labour party leader giving the issue a similar level of prominence in a major campaign speech.
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Ken Livingstone’s 30 year itch
Ken Livingstone has effectively begun a four year campaign to be London’s next Mayor, having turned himself into a one-man unofficial scrutiny committee of the new Johnson regime. He says that he will confirm his decision to run once Labour opens the nomination process in 2010 (though he has shown before that this might not be his only possible route to City Hall).
It is not difficult to see why running again appeals to Ken. It offers not the prospect of avenging his defeat to Boris Johnson and being back in office for the 2012 Olympics too. Were Livingstone to win the Mayoralty again, it would demonstrate political stamina and bounce-backability which might well be unparalleled in democratic politics.
But there’s the rub for Labour. Livingstone may now have his sights set on outlasting both Thatcherism and New Labour. But will the party want to run a candidate in 2012 who would not just be re-fighting the election of four years before, but who first held the leadership of the Greater London Council more than three full decades before?
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Drop the word ‘chav’
Ziauddin Sardar, an Equality Commissioner, made a common sense plea in yesterday’s Guardian for a “sensibility for civility” in the way we treat others. It was an attempt to acknowledge how “derogatory words make way for degrading treatment” while seeking to sidestep the flame wars, and backlash, generated by an excessive policing for ‘political correctness’.
Our experience with PC language argues this is not something we can, or should, police. But that does not mean being indifferent and taking no action to promote civility through language that is neither jargon nor the ungainly, unspeakable invention of impersonal committees. What we need is common sense and a commitment to a sensibility that values the dignity of all.
This is well argued and sensible, though it is probably true that, in Britain at least, ‘political correctness’ has largely been a caricature (a “straw person”, as it were), rarely used other than to complain about ‘political correctness gone mad’.
But attempts to promote this approach may still face that kind of backlash.
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Should we take a stand on the BBC?
There probably aren’t that many ways to spark a revolution in Britain. But Sir Antony Jay, of Yes Minister fame, may have alighted on one of them in his proposal to cut the BBC down to one TV channel and one radio station (which would be Radio 4).
His pamphlet for the Centre for Policy Studies was intended to be well timed, coinciding the with the publication of the BBC’s annual report today. But it was also, perhaps, ill timed as it comes at the end of what seems to have been (for this viewer anyway) a pretty good week for the BBC.
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Lewis’ resignation raises deeper questions
Ray Lewis intends to clear his name. But – while I am not entering into any discussion of the particular allegations against Lewis – this episode highlights some potentialy important challenges to the Cameron project.
The resignation has already generated increased scrutiny of whether the Conservatives are ready to govern. Boris Johnson and David Cameron may suggest they were unlucky: that they took a risk which backfired. But could this episode also cast the spotlight on what David Cameron’s ‘big idea’ of social responsibility adds up to?
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MMR rears its head again
The sharp fall in the take-up of the MMR vaccine is a cautionary tale of our times. The World Health Organisation advises that a 95% take-up rate should be targeted for “herd immunity”.
Britain falls well short, largely because the unfounded scare about the safety of the MMR vaccine behind the sharp reduction in take-up, from 92% in 1996 to 80% in 2004 (though there has since been a smaller reversal).
The consequences have been serious.
2006 saw the first death from measles in Britain for 14 years, while there were . And while the mumps epidemic in the UK in 2005 had more to do with children not being immunised before the introduction of MMR in 1988, a loss of confidence and a lack of take-up would make future occurences more likely.
Next week’s Fabian Review health issue seeks to reopen the public debate about how to raise immunisation rates.
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The mistake of underestimating Boris
Boris is enjoying a honeymoon as London Mayor, as Andrew Grice of The Independent writes on his politics blog.
Will it last? I fear that Boris Johnson’s critics are already repeating the mistake they made during the campaign, as I argue in a New Statesman column on the Mayoral race fallout.
Gleefully anticipating a gaffe-filled mayoralty that will wreck David Cameron’s project helps Johnson to set expectations very low. Johnson benefits as much as Ronald Reagan or George W Bush ever did from being seriously “misunderestimated”. Which other candidate would have got away with floundering and being roughly £100m out on their sums for buses in the televised mayoral debates?
But if he merely remembers to put his trousers on every morning and get to work, Johnson’s mayoralty will be acclaimed as a triumph. But the real test must be the same any other mayor would face: delivery. That – with Johnson presented as a hands-off “chairman of the board” – is truly a test of the Cameron project”.
Rather than expecting a total fiasco, we should be scrutinising what the Tory modernisers want to do with power.
Perhaps the (conservative) answer will be not very much at all.
By electing Boris, we could end up burying him
There are many very good reasons not to vote for Boris Johnson, but most likely we will wake up on Friday to that result.
The election now comes down to a question of turnout and of appealing to second preferences, particularly of Liberal Democrat voters. The key unknown may be what impact last minute doubts about Johnson have. (Two-thirds of the Politics Home ‘insider panel’ think this will make a difference, but will it be enough?)
As I wrote in a Comment is Free piece on how we have come this close to the prospect of Mayor Boris, the Conservative Party has successfully Boris-proofed Lynton Crosby’s campaign from the candidate, and is now worrying about how to Boris-proof David Cameron’s ambitions to be Prime Minister from the possible fallout of Johnson’s Mayoralty.
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Open letter: Libdems should support Livingstone
Dear Vince,
As you are a Liberal Democrat with a record of support for progressive causes and who represents a London constituency in Parliament, I am writing to you as we enter the final month of what looks certain to be the closest London Mayoral election campaign that we have seen to date.
Naturally, I know that you will be campaigning and casting your first preference vote for the Liberal Democrat candidate, Brian Paddick. Many people outside the Liberal Democrats will agree that Brian is running a serious and creditable campaign, particularly on the issue of crime.
However, the London elections also give every voter a second preference vote.
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Why Brown’s Iraq inquiry pledge – to me! – matters
I very much welcome Gordon Brown’s commitment to an inquiry ” to learn all possible lessons from the military action in Iraq and its aftermath” – even aside from the unusual experience of this very welcome political development coming in correspondence between myself and the Prime Minister. (Naturally, one also expects that other Cabinet ministers will take note.
We were very pleased with last week’s budget commitments on child poverty and will be thinking about where else we should now be pressing for progress).
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Trevor Phillips on Obama: not black enough
What on earth is Trevor Phillips up to? Britain’s most prominent black public figure has launched an attack on Barack Obama in this month’s Prospect, reported prominently in The Independent today, accusing the leading Democrat of ‘cynicism’ which will hold back black Americans and hold back the politics of race.
Trevor is entitled to his view, and clearly he is rooting for a Hillary Clinton comeback. But, whatever happens, he ought to acknowledge the Obama achievement and its extraordinary resonance.
The worst part of his argument, especially since he heads the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is his implication that Obama is a less legitimate black leader because he isn’t descended from slaves. What happened to opportunity for all? Trevor Phillips has been controversial because he has challenged and criticized the tendency of multiculturalism to stress differences and create inter-ethnic tensions. Why retreat to the old politics of race, and this discredited question about whether Obama is black enough, when black voters have made it pretty clear what they think?
Phillips doesn’t really present much of an argument for the claim that Obama will set back the cause of post-racial politics. Yes, Obama is a politician. He isn’t the new messiah. He has been out looking for votes, and stirring up hope. But if anybody can think of a less cynical political campaign in the last thirty years, I would be surprised.
We need a shift in the politics of race, as Sunny Hundal and the New Generation Network have argued. The challenge to race leaders is to remember that they should be trying to put themselves out of business. Trevor Phillips has wanted to champion that cause. It would be a great shame if, just as we got there, he decided that to see change, after all, as a threat.
Barack Obama as Icarus?
An Obama nomination isn’t inevitable, yet. But Hillary Clinton’s final, best answer in the Texas candidate’s debate last night acknowledged the possibility of defeat. This was an important signal. Clinton will still fight on to win, but now within the limits demanded by partisan loyalty. (But what alternative is there when a desperate bid to go nuclear would almost certainly backfire?).
The insurgent is now the clear frontrunner and Democrats have a final chance to scrutinize the potential vulnerability of an Obama bid: could he really go toe-to-toe with John McCain in November and win? Will Higham of the think-tank Demos dreads an Obama candidacy, articulating the fear that Obama “is a political Icarus who’s just now nearing the beating sun”.
I think there are three big fears about Obama’s General Election resilience. And each threatens to evoke recurring Democrat nightmares from the ghost of elections past.
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How Barack Obama won the campaign
It certainly isn’t over. The scale of Obama’s victories last week took a neck-and-neck race into with one where he was the frontrunner. The Obama camp deny this and would prefer to stay the underdog – their last overdog phase lasted just days between Iowa and New Hampshire. But the central question of the Democrat campaign is now, in the face of greater scrutiny, he can close the deal.
And whatever the final result, it is difficult not to conclude that Barack Obama has won the campaign. Hillary Clinton’s core problem is that she finds herself in the campaign which Obama has framed. His simply being there after Super Tuesday destroyed her ‘inevitability’ strategy in terms of strategy, public messages and campaign funding and organisation. Despite some mis-steps under pressure, Obama’s campaign has been impressive in its consistency and relative calm.
Still, Hillary Clinton is not out of this.
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