The neconservative temptation beckoning Britain's bitter liberals
For leftists divided by Iraq, tomorrow's launch of a rightwing political society could be a transforming moment
By David Clark Monday November 21, 2005
The idea that foreign policy would come to dominate the political agenda to the extent that it does today would have seemed implausible a decade ago. With the cold war over and the end of history proclaimed, it was time to concentrate on bread-and-butter issues such as jobs and education. Bill Clinton famously won the presidency by exploiting the popular perception that George Bush Sr devoted too much time to international affairs. The Conservatives, of course, tore themselves apart over Europe, but that merely served to illustrate how out of touch they had become. The war on terror has changed all that. Today it seems that foreign policy once again has the power to transform the political landscape.
One organisation that certainly hopes so is the Henry Jackson Society, due to be launched in London tomorrow. At first sight this seems an eccentric initiative. The late Henry "Scoop" Jackson - US senator and would-be presidential candidate - was never a household name in this country. Politically, he was a conventional New Deal Democrat, a staunch trade unionist and a committed environmentalist. Yet the society that bears his name consists mainly of intellectuals and politicians of the free-market right, such as Andrew Roberts and Michael Gove. So what explains this apparent example of political cross-dressing? The answer is that Jackson was also a leading liberal cold warrior and figurehead for what became known as the neoconservative movement.
It is common outside America to regard neoconservatism as synonymous with the Republican right. In fact, its roots lie mostly on the left. The original neoconservatives - also nicknamed Socialists for Nixon - were anti-communist leftists and liberals who became alienated from the Democratic party when it endorsed the anti-Vietnam war candidate George McGovern for president in 1972. Appalled by what they saw as the refusal of liberals to defend their values and confront totalitarianism in the guise of Soviet power, the neoconservatives drifted to the right, contributing to a broader political realignment that swept Ronald Reagan to power.
Many took jobs in the Reagan administration and found a permanent home in the Republican party in the process. While some embraced the neoconservative label, others rejected it and insisted that they remained liberals. A smattering supported Clinton in 1992, while "Scoop" Jackson himself was a loyal Democrat to the end. To this day the neocons even retain an outpost on the left in the form of Social Democrats USA, one of America's two affiliates to the Socialist International.
The founders of the Henry Jackson Society are aware of this history and hope to turn it to their advantage by drawing parallels with Britain. Just as the Vietnam war was a catalyst for the division of American liberalism and the ascendancy of a new conservative coalition, they hope that the schism on the British left over Iraq will form the basis of a similar political realignment and a new governing consensus of the right. The decision to appropriate Jackson's legacy and the appealing tone of the society's founding statement ("There are limits to the market, which needs to serve the Democratic Community and should be reconciled to the environment") are intended to ease the glide path for progressives who might be tempted in that direction.
This is unlikely to take the form of parliamentary defections, though Gisela Stuart, the only Labour MP to sign up so far, might be one to watch; in the spirit of Socialists for Nixon, she endorsed George Bush's re-election campaign. But an effect of this kind is not the main point of the exercise. The neoconservatives of the 70s were significant because they changed the intellectual climate in ways that benefited the right, not because they switched party. Indeed, the fact that a number of its leading figures remained liberals, at least in name, was a considerable plus. One thing that their background in radical politics gave them was an appreciation of the purpose and nature of a hegemonic project.
Looking at the state of British politics today, it is not far-fetched to imagine something analogous happening here. The Iraq war has created feelings of bitterness that will not easily go away, and the effect on the political debate far beyond foreign policy has been pronounced. It is now quite common to find former stalwarts of the liberal commentariat celebrating the primacy of global markets, urging a return to selection in education, denouncing multiculturalism and calling for the election of rightwing governments in foreign countries.
More to the point, it is possible to detect in their writings the same disgust with the liberal mainstream that animated the original US neoconservatives. John Kampfner, of the New Statesman, provoked howls of outrage a couple of years ago when he described a number of leading liberal supporters of the Iraq war as neoconservatives. But if we strip the term of its pejorative connotations, the experience of America 30 years ago provides a valid comparison.
Can anything be done to prevent this schism becoming permanent? The first thing to say is that these putative British neocons sometimes have a point. The left can be reluctant to assert the superiority of liberal democracy, thereby laying itself open to the charge of moral relativism. Those who preach critical engagement with the more moderate currents of Islamism often fail to remain sufficiently critical in the face of reactionary and illiberal opinions. Some with a simplistic, Manichean worldview tend to look like the mirror image of George Bush, disagreeing only about who is good and who is evil.
But a lasting split can only be avoided if the spirit of self-criticism becomes mutual. Liberal interventionists who supported the invasion of Iraq may have been sincere in their motives, but they can no longer pretend that it has been anything other than a disaster in its practical consequences. Islamist extremism isn't flourishing primarily because of liberal indulgence, though examples of this can certainly be found. It is flourishing because, in the eyes of most Muslims, the west is associated less with freedom and democracy than with white phosphorus, Abu Ghraib and Ariel Sharon. In this, the agency of unipolar American power in the hands of a hard rightwing president has proved to be fatally compromising.
Efforts to heal the wounds created by Iraq must be a common responsibility of the liberal left. The coming end of the Blair era, together with the eclipse of the Bush presidency, provides an opportunity to disengage from the occupation and take a new direction in the fight against terrorism around which liberals and progressives can unite. To squander it would be to play into the hands of those who want the next era of British politics to be a Conservative one.
· David Clark is a former Labour government adviser
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Carl