Labour is far too frightened to learn Obama's lesson

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/12/labour.uselections2008

British progressive politicians are fascinated by American politics, but not many of them get this, or much else about it either. America's foreignness - on which the BBC's Justin Webb has just penned a book of his own - consistently escapes them. Too often they jet in wanting to see only similarities, and to focus on the things about America that reinforce their instincts about Britain. They seem only to see the form of politics - the campaign, the soundbites, the presentational issues, the ways of doing things - not the content, the causes and the conflicts that make American politics so distinct and different from ours, this election in particular.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown took the embrace of America a stage further. As soon as they encountered it in 1992, they identified overwhelmingly with Bill Clinton's moderate, centrist Democratic cause because it seemed to confirm and illuminate their view of how Labour should behave - moving to the middle ground, triangulating the difficult issues in the party battle, modernising the campaigning. Blair believed that Clinton's victories were essential preconditions of his own. If the Democrats won, Labour could present themselves as a party on the side of history. Brown's instinct is similar, as his bungled public embrace of Obama this week showed.

Yet the Labour high command, past and present, is privately conflicted about Obama. They want a Democrat to win in November, but they do not really want it to be Obama. Labour resents Hillary Clinton's defeat this year almost as much as the Clintons do. They looked at Clinton and saw someone they recognised. They thought, somewhat naively, that she was the safe and therefore the better choice. That is why there is a kind of schadenfreude in Labour circles about the way the campaign has gone in the past two weeks. It is as though Labour people almost want the Democrats to lose this year, because in some twisted way that outcome would validate their own failure. At one level a lot of them feel very threatened by Obama and his success.

But these are mind-forged manacles. They were needed in their time but that time is no longer now. This is as true in the very different political arena of the United States as it is in ours. In the end, in spite of the risks, the great thing about Obama is that he is the post-Clinton candidate that the Democrats need. He offers a different political temper for different political times. He embodies hope and change and still, perhaps, victory. Brown offers none of these. Obama's lesson is staring Labour in the face - but Labour seems simply too demoralised now to learn it.

[billyoc]

1. Do yourselves a favor and don't learn any lessons from America.

Ever.

[Mesteryo]

2. Labour isn't as civil libertarian..

As the Democrats and seem to like state authority a bit too much on everything but economics.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. An insightful article. However they've made such a mess unaided,

they're naturally fearful that the poisoned fruit of their own endemic bewilderment and folly will be compounded, if they try to depart from the tried and trusted (by their corporate sponsors*).

Changing their political stance to benefit the population at large would terrify them in ordinary times, i.e. when it was accepted by the "people with a voice" that the Emperor was very snazzily attired, but now that the machine with an x-ray eye has been invented (felicitous concidence or what?), and the economic cataclysm has begun to break upon this Septic Isle, the thought of it would scare the living daylights out of Brown and NuLab.

*As long as they'll be bailed out by the tax-payer.