Spectacular Own Goals

Back to politics... even as the Paris Hilton stuff is outstandingly hilarious (though when I first saw the photo, it crossed my mind that you failed to post any mention of the Bush twins Thanksgiving birthday). It is a hungover Saturday, so don't expect any "enterprises of great pith and moment" here. I just want to post this observation that I discussed at length with a great BCL [bachelor of civil law at oxford, which every other university in the world calls an LLM - don't get me started] buddy of mine from Australia. Watching Tony Blair's government these days, it seems to be on conservative overdrive. Blunkett, the Home Secretary - who is responsible for the horrid VISA laws that saw me detained at Stanstead - seems to be the man of the hour with the focus on fear, fear, fear now culminating in ID cards and ever stricter security measures. The former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (who resigned over Iraq) appears every now and then in the Guardian, bemoaning the fact that Labour seems unwilling to sell its positives of the last 7 years and instead insists on grabbing ever more of the Tory platform. This article is especially worth reading, as it encapsulates a lot of what I have been thinking recently in eloquent language. Here are some of the many money quotes:

The ultimate way to frustrate terrorism is not to be terrified by it. Yet we appear to be keen to do the terrorists' job for them by keeping the nation thoroughly frightened by proclaiming that al-Qaida are "on our doorstep". If we are going to claim that Labour makes Britain safer, we need to offer policies to convincingly prove it. Promising an effective system of ID cards by 2012 does not suggest the threat is that urgent. Nor has the government ever explained why ID cards would be any more successful in preventing terrorism in London than in Madrid, where ID cards had long been compulsory. Whatever case can be conjured up for the war, there is no avoiding the conclusion that, assessed by its contribution to curbing terrorism, the invasion - and even more the conduct of the occupation - has been a spectacular own goal The most frequently articulated complaint is that "you are all the same". Yet, perversely, the objective of triangulation is to minimise the difference between a party and its rival, and to deny the electorate a real choice between competing value systems. The immediate problem is that a strategy of doing good by stealth prevents us from convincing many of our own supporters why they should make the effort to keep Labour in power. The more profound problem is that, when we leave office, we will have failed to build a progressive consensus to defend our legacy.

The original observation I mentioned above? Simply that for those on the left these days (at least in Britain and Canada) ardent political types face a difficult, often maddening choice. Do we side with the unabashedly pro-left forces (NDP, Lib-Dem) who have no chance of winning power and often veer too far toward the extremities? Or do we "take arms against a sea of troubles" from within, holding our noses at the eagerness of leadership to score electoral victories by selling out the very historic principles that the party was founded upon? [And on this score, note that I excuse Clinton - he needed triangulation in the much more conservative America.] The policies of Blair and the Chretien-Martin liberals seems founded on such a resolute hunger for control and power. What good is a "left-wing" party victory, if "the chief good and market of its time" is but to deliver the fiscal and social policies of its opponent in order to marginalize him? I say it is no great victory to simply be the ones to institute the other side's ideas. I understand the need to incorporate good ideas from all sides of the spectrum. It is the seemingly unilateral nature of the focus of Blair now, and most pronounced in the early and mid-term years of Chretien, that so frustrates. Which is probably an early indication on why I will continue to be an on-again, off-again Liberal for the forseeable future. And as a final aside, also note how, even in this minute discussion, Cook's public arguments reinforce the pure sophistication of British politics over their Canadian counterpart. Do I need draw the comparison of Cook's reasoning to the abhorrent Carolyn Parrish and her idiotic name-calling? Where in the Liberal ranks do we have (or could hope to see) such a high profile, intellectual backbench dissent? And did you notice the Hamlet references in this post? I saw the RSC in London on Monday. And keep your eye on the name Andrew Higgins for Attorney-General of a future (Aussie) Labour Government. Believe - You heard it here first.