Take a fascinating and often harrowing account in this week’s New York Times about modern-day Cambodia:

As it struggles to leave its past behind, Cambodia today suffers from a particularly painful generation gap: those who survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, and their children and grandchildren, who know very little about it.

photo credit: Strevo

Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge killed around a fifth (most likely around 1.8 million) of the Cambodian population, engaging in radical social engineering which, in its persecution of anyone with the slightest education and its emphasis on a purely agrarian social model, not only had a massive human cost, but also social, economic and cultural consequences which will be felt for decades to come.  That, as the NYT article reports, 80% of under-30 year olds (who make up 70% of Cambodia’s population) know “little or nothing” about this period clearly has massive implications, generationally and in terms of an historical healing process.  Despite the ongoing trials of Khmer Rouge figures, under UN pressure, the Prime Minister, Hun Sen is clearly a proponent of historical oblivion: “[he] once proposed that Cambodia “dig a hole and bury the past.”*

[...] the Khmer Rouge period has not been taught in school, causing some teachers who are survivors to feel orphaned by their students.

A new high school text book that discusses the Khmer Rouge years has been prepared, but it will reach only a portion of the country’s students

This attitude seems to reflect that prevalent in Germany immediately following the war, and perhaps the desire to forget is understandable.  But the disbelieving laughter of children who play with the skulls in the erstwhile Killing Fields must come as a final, devestating blow to those who suffered one of the most abhorrent acts of the bloodiest century in human history, but who thought perhaps, that some solace might at least be found in the final verdict of history.  With the latest trials a seeming irrelevance in national discourse, any hope of “Truth and Reconciliation” seems far off, and in failing to come to terms with the past, we risk alienation and, inevitably, the repetition of tragedy in the future.

I say we, for if the twentieth century has taught us anything, it is that genocide can happen almost anywhere, and that the international community is woefully slow to act.  Forgetfulness (if not ignorance) is stark even with regard to evil at its most manifest: a poll of British schoolchildren last month showed that only 37% knew that 6 millions Jews died in Europe’s Holocaust.  Those children at the back of Cambodian classrooms are not unique, and we must strive to ensure that meta-narratives do not blot out unpalatable aspects of history, especially in a globalised age where history is far from a national construct and in which modern-day cases of genocide make a brief foray into national dialogue before being overshadowed by pressing domestic concerns.

Nor should we allow the Holocaust to become trivialised through misappropriation of language  (a post-modern phenomenon I think is all to common – consider for example, the ubiquity of the word ‘rape’ in contemporary youth parlance).  A piece by Dr Dvir Abramovich, Director of Jewish studies at the University of Melbourne, makes this point quite well and provides some telling examples, although his argument does betray a lack of nuance in equating the poignant and delicate film, Life is Beautiful, with a build-it-yourself LEGO concentration camp .  

photo credit: _L_U_C_A_

Contrary to Abramovich’s assertions, the value of a film like Life is Beautiful is in its original, personal and challenging presentation of the events of the Final Solution.  In constantly demanding honesty, in whatever form available, and in never shying from confrontation with unpalatable aspects of history in an increasingly global process of shaping collective memory, we can only improve the chance that the leaders of tomorrow will be more likely to act when evil inevitably strikes once more.

*Update: for an in-depth academic study of collective memory and the Cambodian genocide, see David Chandler, ‘Cambodia Deals with its Past: Collective Memory, Demonisation and Induced Amnesia’ in Totalitarian Movements and Political Regions, 9:2 (June 2008).

Predict09.eu is a prediction of the outcome of the June 2009 European Parliament elections and the resulting make-up of the next European Parliament. The prediction is based on a statistical model of the performance of national parties in European Parliament elections, developed by three leading political scientists: Simon Hix (London School of Economics), Michael Marsh (Trinity College Dublin), and Nick Vivyan (London School of Economics).

The prediction will be updated each week until the elections on 4-7 June.

Their model analyses the expected make-up of the next Parliament by bloc and by member-state.  Some highlights and analysis below the fold:

• The new Tory-led “European Conservative” bloc could well be the 4th largest grouping in the Parliament, and in percentage terms will reduce the size of the EPP from 37% of current MEPS to 34% of future ones.
• UK predictions: Labour +3; Lib Dem +1: Tory – no change; UKIP* – 8; Green – 2 (i.e. wiped out).  No prediction for the BNP other than the fact that they could “possibly win a seat” (more on this from the Hope Not Hate campaign).

*Incidentally, when you google UKIP, the description you’re presented with is: “Libertarian, non-racist party seeking Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.”  (Umm, if you have to convince people….)

If these numbers seems strange, remember, although it seems long ago now, that Labour are starting from a very low base and the Tories from a very good one.  Labour currently have 19 MEPs, down from 64 in the 1994-1999 Parliament (!).  The 2004 European elections were dominated by Iraq and a desire to punish Tony Blair without the risk of a Michael Howard Government.  A similar but reversed dynamic will likely see the Parti Socialiste losing seats to Sarkozy’s UMP despite the latter’s unpopularity.  This raises an interesting question for UK domestic politics.  Doubtless, the Tories and the media will highlight the “low base” point – but it seems inherently unlikely that the European elections can be the unadulterated disaster for Gordon Brown that some have predicted.

And as for the Commission:

On the basis of our predicted make-up of the next European Parliament, José Barroso has a good chance of being re-elected as Commission President. However, this assumes that the Liberals (ALDE) would support an EPP-Conservative coalition in support of Barroso, which is not a foregone conclusion. An alternative “progressive” coalition, of Liberals, Socialists, Greens, and Radical Left MEPs could still block the re-election of Barroso.

One last point.  It’s interesting to note that, although the European elections are only two months away, UK media coverage has been pretty poor (compare, for example, to dedicated coverage of the US elections two years in advance – yes I know, Barroso’s no Barack).  This is further evidence, in my opinion, that UK opinion makers are just not making the effort to make the EU accessible to the British people in the way that other governments and media outlets do.  For those with a sprinkling of French, for example, this special section of Le Monde.fr, with its interactive graphics, interviews and profiles, provides a striking contrast.

1) Not content with complimenting Obama on his “tan”, Silvio reminds Italians that he himself is “paler”.

2) After the G20 photo has to be re-staged because of a wayward Canadian PM, Silvio wanders off and prevents a successful retake.  His presence was more than evident during the first try, though, where he made headlines for irritating the Queen.

photo credit: ! Franz Maga !

3) At the official arrival ceremonies at the Strasbourg NATO summit, marked by a symbolic crossing of the Pont de l’Europe over the Rhine, Silvio keeps a bemused Angela Merkel waiting while he chats on his phone.  Perhaps more importantly, he then went on to miss the “class photo”, the walk across the bridge and the minute’s silence in honour of fallen NATO troops.  My favourite detail:

At one moment, after the others had entered a marquee, Miss [sic] Merkel even peeked out to see if the Italian leader was coming in to join the photo before shrugging her shoulders.

He was not.

His phone call continued.

When a German military brass band struck up, Mr Berlusconi put his finger in his ear and walked further down the river bank to drown out noise.

4) An oldie, but a goodie – here’s Silvio “playing hide and seek” with Merkel at an EU summit last November.

He’s only being true to form: 

The billionaire media mogul then sparked a minor diplomatic incident in 2005 by suggesting he had used “playboy tactics” to woo Finnish President Tarja Halonen in order to ensure her backing for Italy to host the European Food Safety Authority.

It’s anyone’s guess as to just why the seventy-three year old is has having his third go as leader of the world’s seventh largest economy.  But never fear, there may well be even more power coming his way, and he won’t be leaving the world stage anytime soon – Italy will be hosting the G8 summit in Sardinia in July.  Feel free to add your own favourite Silvio stories in the comments…

Right now, London is a hip compromise between the nonstop newness of Los Angeles and the aspic-pre-served beauty of Paris, sharpened to a New York edge. In short, this is the coolest city on the planet.

photo credit: *spud*

Thirteen years later, Stryker is back with an altogether more despondent vision.  Looking back over the Blair-Brown era, he casts back to the millennial optimism of the 1997 Labour victory and London’s world leadership in fashion, the arts and architecture.  The contrast, and it’s a stark one, is with a modern-day London heading into deep recession – the symbols of its former glory now insistent reminders of its current predicament:

Glitzy restaurants and cutting-edge fashion that used to be signs of welcome creativity reek of excess in a time of belt-tightening. Heavily mortgaged homes that looked like brilliant retirement nest eggs when property prices were soaring year after year now just look like basket cases. Construction sites and street works that once raised expectations of things to come now seem like major inconveniences. 

Interestingly, McGuire’s comparisons are not just historical, but allude to a Britain in decline while other countries rise from the ashes of their own recent past and, as a corollary, to a Prime Minister engaging in “Jeeves” diplomacy, evidently desperate to bask in the Obamian glow for a chance of electoral salvation.  This, we understand, in contrast to the optimistic verve of the Clinton-Blair “special relationship” (of which we are reminded by this weekend’s Progressive Governance Conference, a Clinton-Blair brainchild of 1999, and the announcement of a new Peter Morgan film).  Today, no more British bridge between the indispensable American nation and an idealistic integrationist Europe, but a country trapped in outdated alliance frameworks while Europe looks inward and America looks East (as the positioning before this week’s G20 summit has shown).

All in all, this is a fascinating article which is worth reading in full.  Its vision of British malaise is not quite as downbeat as The Economist’s notion of Reykjavik-on-Thames, but it does, I think, capture a pessimistic national spirit and the sense of drift not just of an economy, but of culture and a political system to boot.  This tone is manifested in phenomena as diverse as “Olympic regret”, the “summer of rage” and the return to headline dominance of political sleaze – always a sign of political decay.  In many ways, it is redolent of the “crisis of confidence” which Jimmy Carter identified in his ill-advised 1979 malaise speech (ill-advised, because it was a gift for Reagan to trumpet the indomitable American spirit – Britons, I suspect, are more accustomed to self-doubt).

If there’s cause for optimism, though, it can be found in McGuire’s original 1996 piece.  Marvelling at London’s reinvention and deliberately cautioning Londoners against hubris, he reminds readers of the city’s peculiar flux and of its rises and falls that, like inexorable market cycles, never cease to eschew the possibility of relaunch just around the corner:

The fun won’t last, of course. London swings violently between booms and busts. It was stuffy in the 1950s, when you couldn’t find a decent meal in the place; it was “swinging” in the 1960s, when pop music and Carnaby Street injected a dose of classless style. It was almost destroyed by grandiose redevelopment schemes in the early 1970s, then rescued again by the entrepreneurial energy of punk. In the early 1990s the city was mired in a deep recession. Now it’s back. Nobody planned this; nobody ever has.

photo credit: World Economic Forum

The London Summit, which will be held on one fateful day, April 2nd, is a follow-up to a session held last November in Washington D.C. – a session in which rather little was decided, except vague assurances about cutting taxes and increasing government spending.  The Prime Minister’s zeal was already clear at this stage.  He declared that the summit  was “the road to the new Bretton Woods. It is absolutely clear that we are trying to build new institutions for the future.”  For him, London is where the deal will be sealed.   His agenda is extraordinarily ambitious.  As the Economist sardonically put the issue:

The summit should not only stimulate the economy and renounce protectionism, but also bolster the IMF and other international financial outfits, revamp regulation, create an early-warning system for crises, and save the poor. It was as if Mr Brown thought the ailing economy would yield to an act of governmental will, if only it were colossal enough.

The Economist, ever pragmatic, argues that such overreach risks undermining the immediate necessities of global government stimulus and a united front against protectionism.  This pessimism seems to be borne out by the unenthusiastic noises coming from G20 capitals and an emerging transatlantic gulf in attitudes.  Below the fold, I look at the opposition to Gordon Brown’s plan for new financial institutions, and the implications for his domestic political fortunes.

The United States: A Familiar Refrain?

Predictably, in the US opposition to Brown’s “New Bretton Woods” is founded on unease about sovereignty, and a national tendency to distrust international institutions.  These worries, perhaps masked by the unflinching politeness which American representatives show to visiting leaders, was detectable in the lack of ovation with which Brown’s references to new institutions met when he addressed Congress.  Republican Congressman Jeff Fortenberry tweeted, for example:

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown addressed joint session of Congress. Proposed global New Deal.  Serious concerns about additional financial global interdependency.

But it’s not just the GOP.  Obama himself was pretty reticent to commit to the Brown plan during the “press avail” in the Oval Office earlier this month. Moreover, as the man to whom the whole world is looking for messianic leadership, he seems unlikely to leave the show to Brown.  For the Economic Times (of India):

Gordon Brown went off to Washington to make double sure that Mr Obama would actually show up, and get involved in the discussions. Well he has, and how. His administration has blown the Summit agenda apart even before the first photo-op, proving that US, down or not, is still pretty much the biggest elephant in the room. 

 Ironically, however, given the respective reputation of the US and Europe, the biggest gulf between the two is over stimulus.  Obama wants more money to go to the IMF, more government spending, and more stimulus packages (specifically, a fiscal stimulus worth 2% of GDP this year and next).  Blaming the problem more on hedge funds and tax havens that the banking system itself, it’s big-spending Europe that this time is reluctant to throw more money at the problem until it sees concrete results from first efforts.

Europe: Against Global Fiscal Stimulus

Last week, the Guardian reported that, perhaps disastrously for Brown, Merkel and Sarkozy had come out against his calls for global stimulus:

After talks at Chequers to prepare the way for next month’s G20 summit in London, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, ruled out ordering another “fiscal stimulus” in the short term, and made it clear that if more action were to prove necessary in Germany it would be for Berlin to decide, not the G20.

photo credit: Chesi – Fotos CC

Her comments were echoed by the French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, who was attending a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Horsham, West Sussex. As ministers tried to agree a way forward, Lagarde said she was optimistic the meeting could make progress, but added that nations needed to “evaluate the remedies already put in place by each of us” before ordering huge extra spending on top of that already sanctioned.

This attitude seems at odds with the traditional British perception of a Franco-German alliance pushing for common EU policies  at the price of national sovereignty and should serve as a reminder that global stimulus is not the only option on the table.  It is also discrepancy which reflects the inevitable result of incommensurate political and economic integration.  As Paul Krugman argues in his NYT column today:

The economies of Europe’s many nations are almost as tightly linked as the economies of America’s many states — and most of Europe shares a common currency. But unlike America, Europe doesn’t have the kind of continentwide institutions needed to deal with a continentwide crisis.

This is a major reason for the lack of fiscal action: there’s no government in a position to take responsibility for the European economy as a whole. What Europe has, instead, are national governments, each of which is reluctant to run up large debts to finance a stimulus that will convey many if not most of its benefits to voters in other countries.

[...] Europe, in other words, is turning out to be structurally weak in a time of crisis.

Add to the gulf between the Brown-Obama axis and Franco-German feet-dragging the Asian insistence that if any new financial institutions are to be created, emerging economies should have more of a say in how they are run (and FCO indiscretion about “two-tiers”), and the prospect for consensus in April looks small.

Brown Feeling Blue

Having staked so much political capital on the London Summit, we are left asking what Gordon Brown’s fate will be if it fails.  Doubtless, the Tories will leap on the issue as another chance to demonstrate Brown’s failure to lead, but it seems unlikely that they have a convincing narrative against the merits of international financial action.  A lot depends on how the media cover the summit (and whether alarmist predictions of a “summer of rage” launched at the same time do indeed come true).  In truth, failure at the G20 would probably not directly affect Gordon Brown’s domestic popularity, which seems stuck at around the 30% level.  What it could do, though, is damage his claim to international leadership, and potential ambition to head up any newly-created financial institution.  Gordon Brown clearly enjoyed signing autographs for members of Congress on the House floor; whether he has the chance to do so again could well be decided by April 3rd.

photo credit: loungerie

Why exactly did the Cameroonian plan tug on the heartstrings of the John Redwoods and William Hagues of this world?  Above all, it’s important to remember that the modern-day British correlation between Left and Right and Europhile and Eurosceptic is an anomaly in international terms as well as historically (Labour’s 1983 manifesto promised, for example, to pull Britain out of the then-EEC).  Your most ardent Superstaters are likely to be found, not in the Socialist bloc, but within Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats or Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP.  The Tories smell a federalist scent wafting around the hemicycle, and it gives them the jitters. For them, there’s nothing worse than the familiar refrain of common security, immigration and foreign policies.    And don’t get the anti-Maastricht veterans started on the Lisbon Treaty (no really, please don’t). 

So, you might be asking, Cameron’s had four years: how’s he got on?  Not well, is the answer.  And with only three months before a new Parliament is elected, Cameron risks, in Prescottian style, getting the political egg on his face.  The problem is that most of the centre-right parties who make up the EPP are quite happy where they are, thank you very much.  As the largest grouping in the Parliament, they elect its President, who gets to do fun things like fawn over Hillary Clinton, and perhaps more importantly, have an evident leg-up in setting the political agenda and controlling committees.  Bubbling below the surface, as I mentioned last week, are also various propositions to expand the role of the parliamentary blocs.  If the Tories do break away, then, they could deprive the EPP of its largest-party status, giving European Socialists a boon (although the EPP still fancies its chances).  The European Parliament doesn’t like splinter groups, especially national ones.  It somewhat defies the point of a multitude of countries coming together to work towards common goals after centuries of division.  That’s why it takes 25 MEPs from seven countries to create a recognised grouping, eligible for EU funding.  To many, this looks like a bit of a long-shot for Cameron’s comrades, assuming he doesn’t want to end up sharing floor space with Jean-Marie Le Pen, Alessandra Mussolini or not-quite-Fascists-but-really-pushing-it parties (I’m looking at you, Law and Justice).

photo credit: edmittance

But internal European Parliament arrangements are probably not what are on Cameron’s mind.  For him, the political dilemma is tricky.  Either he stays true to his word, and succeeds in attracting Czech, Baltic, Swedish and Italian Conservatives as seems to be his best-case scenario (good luck…), thereby winning plaudits from within his Party, or he fails, embittering the Eurosceptics who are already miffed at the return of Ken Clarke.  Either way, in a move which will be one of the first to which foreign leaders pay attention, Cameron risks appearing like an isolationist who has no conception of the necessity of co-operation during this time of recession.  Not a great way to dispel doubts about the existence of a foreign policy vision.  By all accounts, Barack Obama wasn’t impressed by this kind of attitude when he met Cameron last summer.  So does Cameron move out of the EPP, annoying other governments to placate an internal faction of his own party, or does he stay in, and risk re-opening the fissures which destroyed the Conservatives in the Thatcher-Major era?  Either way, Dave,  the clock’s ticking…

Update: the decision looks pretty final.

Political intrigue in Germany ahead of September’s elections.  Will Angela Merkel be able to free herself from the constraints of the Grand Coalition?  Her personal popularity suggests so, but it’s not clear whether this will spill over into unequivocal support for her Christian Democrats.

In the context of the ongoing rants at business news channel CNBC over Obama’s economic policies, Daniel de Groot at Open Left links to a fascinating Pew poll (from October) that compares how well-informed various Americans are depending on where they get their information from.  Some obvious findings (doing well, the New Yorker and the BBC; doing badly, Fox News and religious radio), but also some surprises (ESPN outpolls CNN, for example).  And take pride: a whole 28% of Americans can name the British PM.                    photo credit: holger doelle

Also from Open Left, it had been taken for granted that party identification was in inexorable decline, but has Obama (or indeed, Bush) stemmed the tide of this phenomenon, and set Democrats on a long-term upward trajectory?  Sure looks like it.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department has entered the blogosphere.  Some good catch-up clips from her recent travels in Europe and the Middle East (a visit that serves as the prologue to President Obama’s visit next month).  The FT’s Brussels Blog reports on the masterfully executed political strategy which was her visit to the European Parliament.

photo credit: carf

“Lexington”, who writes the Economist’s weekly column on America, now has his own blog.  This will be the Economist’s second blog on American politics, the other being the long-running Democracy in America.  Slightly off topic perhaps, the latter yesterday considered the nefarious consequences of British visa restrictions (which I discussed briefly last week) on… clowns.

Talking of the Economist, there have been a few articles about friendship groups and social networks recently, but for my money, this article rises above the pack.  Check out “Primates on Facebook: even online, the neocortex is the limit“, and ponder whether you have enough friends to surpass the “Dunbar number”.

One of the oddest things about our political system is that, in all likelihood, the broad centre-left of Labour and Lib-Dem will top 50% in next year’s election, but it looks pretty certain that a Tory government will be returned.  With this in mind, and allusions to the 80s along the lines of my own Thatcher rant, Polly Toynbee eyes electoral reform.

And finally… Andrew Sullivan links to a welcome if unusually frank expression of opinion by a British PM on US politics: Gordon Brown on California’s homophobic proposition 8.

photo credit: Albertane

Some argue that it’s impossible to achieve a common political identity across 27 member states, pointing to different political traditions, language barriers and the enduring pride of the nation-state.  The possibility of “demos” and the very logic of supra-national representation was, for example, attacked by Czech President Vaclav Klaus in the European Parliament last month.  The attitude of Klaus, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council (bring on Sweden), is indicative of a habit of  unproductive naysaying.  It slams the European project without offering solutions and delights only those with preconceived Eurosceptic attitudes.

Without indulging in the media-fostered image of phantom overlords plotting away in Eurospeak in their Brussels hideaways, then, I fully admit the need for a greater sense of relevance for the EU and the importance of attempts to foster “Europeanness”.  Indeed, in response to Klaus’s challenge, the task of pro-Europeans is to identify measures that could be taken to improve the extent to which Europeans identify with their policy makers and planners.  Below the fold, I discuss some of these ideas.

For a start, most people will vote in June’s European elections based on national political concerns (actually, most people won’t vote at all, but let’s worry about those who will for now).  In Britain, for example, June’s vote will largely be a protest vote against Gordon Brown, just as the 2004 vote was used to give Tony Blair a kick in the teeth with the assumption that it didn’t really matter.  This, of course, only devalues the democratic worth of the European Parliament, and because most Britons don’t know or care what it does, they also aren’t particularly bothered whether the PES or EPP come out as the largest party.

In order to take elections to the European Parliament seriously, citizens need to see its effects on their everyday lives.  The crux of the issue here is the complexity of EU institutions and the democratic deficit at the heart of power.  Paradoxically, of course, the Lisbon Treaty which would have extended parliamentary powers was rejected by the Irish and by British (and other) public opinion over fears of unaccountability.  A post by Jon Worth emphasises this point about relevance, and highlights the campaign to have the parties within the European Parliament propose the President of the Commission.  At least that would show that European elections had some tangible impact.  He  points to the “Anybody but Barroso” campaign as a vehicle.  By the same token, I think that having an EU Commission President with whom people can identify as a leader would do a lot of good (again, of course, we’re talking about the what would have beens of the Lisbon Treaty).  Given this, I’m not sure I subscribe to the idea of anybody but Barroso – having an established political figure take on the role, rather than some bureaucratic compromise (I’m looking at you Jean-Claude Juncker) would intrinsically imbue the position with worth.

One way to make European elections relevant in their own right would be to encourage the development of pan-European parties and policies.  It’s true that within Eurocratic circles, such things do exist: the PES manifesto, for example, is worth a look.  But these are not documents with which ordinary voters will be familiar, even if all the constituent parties have signed up to their principles.  As this post from the Democratic Society blog argues, we need not just pan-European parties, but pan-European campaigns “so that people who vote for the Labour party in England know they’re voting for the same thing as someone voting for PASOK.”

photo credit: laurentius87

It’s also the little things that count.  In a talk I attended today by  Romano Prodi, the former EU Commission President and Italian PM recounted a conversation with a “former British Prime Minister” who had stressed to him the need for British citizens to be able to relate to European institutions.  ”But Tony,” Romano continued with a wry smile, “why then have you blocked the EU flag and anthem from the [constitutional] treaty?!”.  The point is clear.  To identify with the European project, institutions need to be simplified, even renamed, and adopt the trappings to which people can relate.

We need to abandon the fallacy that inter-European differences render common political parties and other such facets of “demos” impossible.  Direct relevance to people’s lives could well be the way to do this, especially in a period of economic crises where international solutions provide the only means of recovery.  In his talk, Prodi used a nice analogy between the Italian Risorgimento and modern European integration.  Silicy and Lombardy may still disagree on a lot, and in the mid-nineteenth century, they didn’t have a particularly common language either.  At that time Massimo D’Azeglio declared that “Italy is made, now we must make Italians”.  Perhaps then, by providing a convincing concept of Europe, we can create Europeans.

photo credit: Steve Punter

Nor, it would now seem, does the mere mention of “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie” elict the Pavlovian response “Out Out Out!”  The BBC’s sympathetic portrayal, and Gordon’s acceptance of the idea of not only a Downing Street portrait, but even a state funeral, seem to imply that after Harry Enfield’s Tory Boy, an election campaign based around Thatcher’s hair on Hague’s head and spontaneous celebration when she quit, it’s finally OK to be a bit soft on the Iron Lady.  Just when did it go out of fashion to hate Tories?

How has this happened?  Well, as Martin Kettle points out in his Guardian column, part of the explanation is that, unlike in 1999, we’re now on the precipice of a Conservative comeback.  David Cameron is poised to become the next Prime Minister, so, the media seem to be presuming, we’re all a bit nostalgic for the last era of Conservative hegemony, if not (as in the case of my generation) curious about what it was actually like.

There’s some danger in all this.  As Kettle points out, we may be on the verge of a Cameron premiership, but this does not mean that we’ve necessarily turned right:

 

Our era is not like that. This is not a conservative moment. If anything it is the reverse. The failures of 2009 are those of the banks and the absurdly over-rewarded bankers, not of the public services and their low-paid union members as in 1979. The failure of governance in 2009 is the failure of inadequate regulation – not of too much, as was the case in 1979. It is financial ungovernability that has brought the economy to its knees today, not union power. By rational standards this is a left of centre moment.

In the United States, that is exactly what is happening. Barack Obama’s speech to Congress this week, with its key insistence that America faces a day of reckoning, expresses all this with great potency. Britain is more problematically placed to take the same advantage because the country is governed by Labour ministers from a different era who had no alternative but to take Thatcher seriously and no realistic course other than to accommodate their party to her destruction of the pre-1979 order.

 

The Maggie-fest suffers another serious flaw.  It is about political power-plays, not about policy.  It is about personality, not about the people.  And, in turning the fall of Lady Thatcher into a Greek tragedy, as the BBC adaptation seems wont to do, and beatifying her even before her death, we risk casting aside in the collective consciousness many of the terrible consequences of her reign.  Let us never forget what 18 years of Conservative government did to Britain.  Let us never forget that society was torn apart, communities destroyed, inner-cities systematically sacrificed for new Beemers for city bankers and a war waged with the smiling face of jingoism and the unceasing background motivation of electoral politics.  And let’s not forget, in maligning those damned cowards who forced her out, that she went for three very clear reasons: an increasing tendency for autocracy; her ceaseless opposition to Europe which her peers saw as dangerous to the national and international interest; and the imposition of the Poll Tax, the most regressive tax in modern political history.

Yes, she’s defined our modern politics, in emulation and opposition.  Yes, her economic model transformed the country and the Labour Party.  Fine, we can have an honest debate about her legacy (but why we’re having it right now bewilders me), but let’s not allow the damage she did to become a mere footnote in history.  Britain today is a far better place than it was in 1997, after seven years of half-hearted Thatcherism which entrenched the damage of her eleven year premiership.  It’s been a hard fought battle to insist that there is, after all, a society.  In this new winter of discontent, we cannot allow Thatcher to become the standard-bearer for a new Conservative era.  We must fight, as Obama is doing under more favourable circumstances, to preserve what is fundamentally a social democratic moment.  I’ll leave you with Oona King, who gives a personal and emotional account of Margaret Thatcher’s influence on her own career, concluding, as all on the Left should, that whatever her achievements, she can never been forgiven.

And because I can’t resist, after you’ve flicked through the New Statesman’s “Where Were You When You Heard” article, why not savour in the dulcet tones of Michael Burke (and the incredibly authoritative titles of 1990s BBC News!):

photo credit: mindgutter

Non-voting representative no more, however.  Very soon, the District of Columbia will no longer complain of ‘taxation without representation’.  The long-awaited follow-up to the 23rd Amendment (1961) which gave Washingtonians votes for President may now have belatedly arrived.  Yesterday, the Senate voted 61-37 for a D.C. voting rights bill, expected to be quickly followed by the House and signed by President Obama, which will extend voting rights to the legislature.  There are, of course, constitutional issues at play when considering the notion of full congressional representation for D.C.  The Bill is likely to face legal challenges, which will probably make it all the way to the Supreme Court (perhaps, one speculates, finally giving the Supremes a chance to make up for Bush v Gore).

For Chris Bowers, that the constitutional status of the District is back on the agenda is a signal that a national conversation should be opened about the statuses of other anachronistic US territories, especially Puerto Rico, which, as we were reminded of at the time of Hillary Clinton’s primary victory in the island last June, remains largely a colonial entity.  The US should indeed be wary of the potential for unrest during the recession.  In an escalating crisis, Europe’s biggest remaining colonial power, France, is being reminded of the awkward relationship of modern colonialism and economic crisis in its Caribbean territories, Martinique and Guadeloupe.  American hypocrisy over D.C., Puerto Rico and the rest of its overseas territories is rarely something that is openly discussed, but yesterday’s Senate vote is an encouraging sign that Obama’s America is beginning to live up to Bobby Kennedy’s call of “really mean[ing] it when we say all men are created free and equal before the law.”