Let us not assume, lazily, that all Brownites are necessarily fundamentalists
So, Gordon Brown has been throwing his weight around in Iraq. On the face of it, that is something for the Iraqis to worry about. But the question arises: is he a threat to Britain?
Mr Blair and the Blairites think he is. They favour the use of force against him. They emphasise that he possesses stealth taxes and has been prepared to use them in the past, thus threatening the Blairite middle-class vote. It is time to seek the counsel of the British foreign policy Establishment.
Lord Hurd (former foreign secretary): ‘Brown is really no worse than, for example, President Assad. Certainly, he thought it necessary to fly for the weekend to Iraq in order, among other things, to spend £100 million on that country. He could have done that from the Commons front bench. I accept that he looted the money from British taxpayers.
‘But finance ministers do that kind of thing all the time in that part of the world. Britain, I mean. The money will be spent on buying Labour activists’ votes in the forthcoming leadership elections of Britain’s ruling party: the Pay Arfists.’ Malcolm Rifkind, Conservative MP for Kensington and Chelsea and another former foreign secretary: ‘Quite so. Pay Arfism is the British ruling ideology. People pay arf now under the impression that they won’t have to pay the other arf later. As a result, everyone’s in debt, and the credit card people are happy. But, as an ideology, it is not to be confused with fundamentalism, which is the mistake that the American neoconservatives make. It is entirely secular; or indeed circular.’ Lord Patten (former European foreign affairs commissioner who everyone assumes is also a former foreign secretary, and who proceeds on the assumption that he is): ‘I agree with Douglas and Malcolm. There are no easy solutions. But, then again, it’s not rocket science. And we must remember the elephant in the room. We in the Commission were long in favour of the two-Scots solution, and events have proved us right. There is some evidence that Condoleezza Rice is coming round to it, though we must await the Baker report. There will never be a lasting peace until Brown ceases to occupy so much Labour territory.
‘The key to a lasting settlement runs through the West Bank of the Clyde. Of course there will be violence and corruption at first. This is, after all, Scotland. And where we have Scotland, we have a dangerous cocktail. But in the longer term there is no reason to suppose that Brown and Reid cannot live alongside one another independently, and in circumstances of respect. This is no time for neoconservatism.’ Lord Hurd (or possibly Sir Malcolm or Lord Patten): ‘Or indeed any Conservatism at all, as David Cameron’s success shows.’ Amid all this coming and going from Britain, moderates, fundamentalists and Taleban in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan had this week to get on with their lives as best they could, pestered, as they were, by politicians seeking to remain British prime minister for as long as possible, especially with ‘Yates of the Yard’ lying in wait should they depart before the New Year, or to become prime minister later.
Sudan was a long way for Mr Cameron to go in his endless and so far — it must be admitted — rather fruitful pursuit of the Liberal Democrat vote. But his strategists presumably tell him that that is as good a way as any to find it. Those experts insist that your modern politician must be seen on television meeting ordinary people. Experts have always said that. The difference today is that, what with globalisation, the ordinary people must as often as possible appear exotic. So how tired must these ordinary exotics be by now with all this canvassing from Britain.
‘Mr Blair (or Mr Brown or Mr Cameron) is here to see you again, Abdul,’ a neighbour will warn some busy Taleban yet again.
‘Tell him I’m in a meeting. I’m beating my wife.’ Doubtless Mr Prescott, in Mr Cameron’s case, is especially scornful of this useless Old Etonian poser bothering folk in Daft Four. But such trips are what modern politics is about.
We British Conservatives trying to follow American politics constantly complain about the reporting of most of the British correspondents in the United States; with the Times’s Gerard Baker an indispensable exception. That country is full of brilliant conservative journalism, but our people on the spot ignore it.
The reason is ‘cultural’. Foreign correspondents tend to be liberals. The same problem applies to American correspondents in London. They send back the liberal versions. Britons trying to follow the midterm elections day by day had to read the many American websites which give the conservative as well as the liberal version.
Most of us Conservatives did not think that the Democrats would do particularly well. They would make gains in the House, but the Republicans would probably hold the Senate. A pattern had been established: in the last two presidential elections, and in the 2002 mid-terms, the Democrats had boasted of success through the summer and well into the autumn, as they did now. But, as election day drew nearer, they modified their forecasts. Come the day and much of it was ‘too close to call’.
There was also an ideological point. Even if the Democrats gained, their winners would on the whole be not much different from the Republicans. Some would be ‘economic populists’ opposed to Wall Street and the corporations. But in American history that has often been as reactionary as it has been liberal. More importantly, these Democrat winners would be pro-gun, Christian, anti-abortion, and not in favour of the United States just giving up in Iraq.
Our people in Washington would emphasise none of this, so delighted would they be to report the rout of Christianity and President Bush’s foreign policy, which they regard as synonymous. It was therefore surprising, and welcome, that several reports, including in the Guardian just after the elections, were about the conservatism of the Democrat winners.
We enthusiasts wandered the internet in search of more detail. Whereupon we found that those reports, which we had found so refreshing, were wrong. Only a few of the winning Democrats ran as conservatives; the most publicised and thus likely to catch foreign correspondents’ attention. Nearly all Democrat newcomers could properly be described as liberal. It was indeed a liberal sweep. Most of our people were wrong even as they strove to do right. That’s progress.
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