[lbo-talk] The British neoconservatives

[Michael Pugliese]

New Statesman
12 May 2003
Cover story  
 
John Kampfner on a new alliance, comparable to Bush's
backers in the US. Many are from the left; others,
though from the right, think Blair the only leader
worth influencing
The British neoconservatives
John Kampfner
 
 
An intriguing new alliance is forming in British
politics. It lies beyond conventional party
structures. It is based mainly in the media, but is
being watched approvingly by the government. It is a
coalition between conservative thinkers and their
pro-war, pro-intervention counterparts who hailed from
the left. This new breed of militarist Blairites
believes it is in the vanguard of a progressive new
foreign policy. They are disdainful of their critics.
They see the future as theirs. Together with their new
allies of the right, they form a first generation of
British neoconservatives.
 
Downing Street is comfortable with these people. Many
are friends. Together, they define themselves and
their politics against the left and against much of
the Labour Party. Iraq was the catalyst for this
merger. But its roots were established long ago - in
the electoral hegemony of Tony Blair, in the lack of
parliamentary opposition from the right, in the
failure of the Third Way to establish an ideology
closer to European social democracy, and in the
phenomenon that is George W Bush.
 
These neo-cons share much common ground with their
more confident counterparts in the US. There is one
essential difference, however. In America the
Republicans are riding high, with the presidency and
both houses of Congress firmly in their control. The
economy could be their undoing over the next 18
months, but the Democrats remain in poor shape. Plans
are being laid for four more years of Bush.
 
In Britain, there is no political delivery vehicle of
the right. Even the most ardent Tory supporter would
acknowledge that, barring a catastrophe of untold
proportions, Blair is guaranteed another eight years
in office if he wants them. The smarter policy-makers
and thinkers of the right in the UK have given up on
the Conservative Party. They have invested their hopes
in a Labour Prime Minister.
 
As in the US, many of the prominent political
operators began at opposite ends of the spectrum. Now
they have converged. They agree on a range of
policies.
 
First, they agree on the use of force to depose
dictators and impose democracy. Blair first outlined
his interpretation of "liberal interventionism" in a
speech in Chicago in 1999 which set benchmarks for
military action. He was strongly influenced by
academics such as Michael Walzer and Lawrence Freedman
and by organisations such as the international contact
group on intervention, a collection of the global
great and good whose report in 2001, The
Responsibility to Protect, set out the occasions on
which national sovereignty should be overridden. The
main advocate of this course of action has long been
John Lloyd, formerly of the New Statesman (where he
set out some of the early thinking) and now back at
the Financial Times.
 
This originally leftish view of military action found
a harder edge and a willing match in the primacy and
pre-emption doctrine of the Bush administration and
its leading thinker, Paul Wolfowitz. Both groups have
united around their abhorrence of the centre-right and
centre-left mainstream of the early 1990s - the likes
of John Major, Douglas Hurd and the early Bill Clinton
- citing inaction over Bosnia as their main crime.
 
 
 
The alliance of Blairites and Bushites goes further
than that. Both groups are ardent Atlanticists; they
believe in the fundamental goodness of the US and of
any pax Americana. They look back with pride to
American power in the Second World War and
particularly to the US imposition of peace and
democracy in Germany and Japan following the Allied
victory. They regard subsequent failures such as
Vietnam as unfortunate, and US support for
dictatorships in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere
during the cold war as regrettable but incidental.
 
They share a strong sense of patriotism and admiration
for the nation state. They feel a visceral suspicion
of multilateral institutions such as the United
Nations and something between disappointment and
animosity towards individual countries in Continental
Europe. (On the European Union, they are somewhat
confused.) They feel a sense of identity with "strong
leaders", and hope to see in Blair a continuum in the
Churchill-Thatcher mould. They liken any form of doubt
or hesitation about military intervention to
appeasement in the 1930s. They are comfortable with
citing evil as a pretext for policy.
 
This kind of approach unites commentators who
originate from the left, such as the Guardian's David
Aaronovitch, and those who have stayed on the right
but who praise Blair from this standpoint, such as
Matthew d'Ancona of the Sunday Telegraph.
 
The neo-cons of Britain and the US share an adoration
of the free market. They see the Anglo-Saxon economic
model of low-wage labour costs and flexibility as an
international paradigm. They harbour an instinctive
fondness for large corporations - their moral and
economic beneficence - and hold in disdain or contempt
European-style collectivism and trade union rights.
They have given up on European politicians and
thinkers who shun Blair's recipe of economic
liberalism.
 
Finally, both groups also converge in large measure in
their approach to Israel. Unlike the neo-cons in the
US, there is little appetite on the right in the UK
for an Israel beyond the 1967 borders. Yet they are
impatient with Palestinian grievances, seeing the
Palestinians as the authors of their own misfortune.
And they share a deep-rooted conviction that virtually
all criticism of Israel must, by definition, be
inspired by anti-Semitism.
 
On the domestic agenda there are greater links between
Blairism and Bushism, and between their ideologues,
than either side might care to admit. They have a
shared rights and responsibilities agenda (although
phrased differently in the US); a similarly tough
approach to crime and imprisonment (although in
Britain this stops well short of capital punishment);
an increasingly robust approach to immigration; and a
preference for the private sector over the public
sector wherever possible.
 
The biggest division between these groups is on the
social agenda. Moral majoritarianism in Britain is
unfashionable, even among many thinkers on the right.
Whatever Blair's personal convictions, he knows
religion doesn't play in politics here.
 
All in all, there are enough concentric circles
between the Blairites and the right in the US and UK.
To borrow one of Blair's favourite dictums, there is
more that unites these people than divides them.
 
In the US, the nexus revolves around think-tanks such
as the American Enterprise Institute, commentators
such as Charles Krauthammer, publications such as
William Kristol's Weekly Standard, and politicians
such as Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams and Douglas Feith
who are at the heart of government. They, and they
alone, are setting the intellectual agenda for the
White House. The post-1968, post-Vietnam, Clintonian
"third way" band has gone into hiding.
 
 
 
The US neo-cons are "neo" because many started off as
anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals. Some are the
offspring of a Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and
1940s, which became purely anti-communist until the
1980s. Since the Reagan era, they have found a new
lease of life in the post-cold war and post-9/11
vision of American dominance.
 
The British neo-cons probably do not acknowledge their
own existence. Many of them share a communist heritage
that turned itself into Labour, new Labour and now
Blair-second-term Labour. They dismiss the right's
traditional political instrument, the Conservative
Party, as irrelevant but are grateful that the Tories'
travails have left them considerable political
territory to fill.
 
In Downing Street very recently, I was struck by a
sense of excitement that victory over Iraq had, in the
view of several No 10 operatives, "finished off" the
left in Britain. This was not crowing, nor was it
wishful thinking. This was a passionate conviction
that, whatever the problems in the reconstruction of
Iraq, whatever the problems with the Middle East and
Europe, or the difficulties in explaining away the
absence of any chemical or biological weapons, they
had secured a vital prize - the dismemberment of their
critics on the left.
 
Blair's battles with the left have been talismanic -
from Clause Four and Iraq to foundation hospitals and
the reform of public services. He has advertised and
relished the fight. His battles with the right - each
tax increase, each social reform, each economic
concession, from the minimum wage to union recognition
- have been cautious, stealthy and uncomfortable.
 
Now many of Blair's friends in the commentariat -
those who have traditionally supported the
Conservatives as well as those who have not - seek a
final showdown with the left. They share this same
excitement at the extinguishing of the last embers of
what unfashionably would have been called socialism.
 
The happiest home for this group, for this merging of
left and right, is Rupert Murdoch's empire. Blair and
Bush share a respect and admiration for the man from
News Corporation. They are prepared to deregulate
their media markets for him. They take criticism from
him on the chin, knowing that his praise is more
plentiful. In the US, Murdoch's Fox network has stolen
a march on its rivals with its "patriotic" coverage of
Iraq. The other networks are seeking to emulate it.
The Pentagon and White House could not be happier.
 
In Downing Street, Sky is Blair's preferred 24-hour
news station. His people like to put it about that
Murdoch's network had a much better war than the BBC.
Among the newspapers, the Sun does No 10's heavy
lifting. Its graphic of Jacques Chirac metamorphosing
into Saddam Hussein, and its "worm" headlines, helped
Blair to use antipathy towards the French to rally
support in his darkest hour. The Times provides the
intellectual ballast. Its opinion columns, driven by
earnest young men such as Michael Gove and Tim Hames,
constantly probe him from the inside right.
 
Commentators from the Daily Mail such as Melanie
Phillips and Janet Daley of the Telegraph are feared,
but they are not really embraced, because they have
positioned themselves outside the Blair firmament.
Other papers such as the Guardian, Observer, FT and
Independent have individual members in the "family".
 
Many of these believers see theirs as a very personal
mission. When they have to criticise Blair they
ululate and apologise for their disloyalty. They write
in often-tortured terms because they - Blairites and
Bushites alike - cast themselves in the role of
victim. They see themselves as courageous members of a
small but moral political cell, fighting the malign
and ever-powerful force of the liberal establishment.
This is alternately the "Arabist" Foreign Office, the
"anti-Semitic" left in the UK, or the irredeemably
left-wing BBC. In the US, the equivalents are the
"Arabist" State Department, "anti-Semitic" Europe and
anything that is East Coast and not conservative.
 
The terms "left" and "right" have in Blair's world
become redundant. He and many of his supporters have
found common cause with many of their erstwhile
adversaries. It may be an odd marriage, but it is a
logical one, and it will last.

-- 
Michael Pugliese