The main difference between New Labour 2001 and 2009 is the War on Iraq. It had supported “humanitarian interventions” before, in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, but nobody expected that a Labour government would get involved in a renewed invasion of Iraq against which the majority of the voters was opposed and for which there were no good reasons other than that the US asked them to.

@53: while I’m not sure I agree with Jack Strocchi on the details, I do think he has an important insight. Dsquared, along with almost every other commenter that I’ve seen on this issue, is trying to parse it in terms of “where did we go wrong”. What’s missing from this analysis is any possibility that the other guys may have done something /right/.

This is an ancient and glorious tradition, to be sure. I lived in Britain in the middle 1980s, and I remember being repeatedly struck by how blind Labour supporters were to Thatcher’s political competence. You could loathe the woman’s policies, but that should have had nothing to do with recognizing the obvious fact that she was a more than competent political tactician and not a half-bad strategist either. Not brilliant, and she got increasingly sloppy after the ‘87 election, but up until then she was a solid player of the game. But acknowledging this was anathema. I’d talk to Labourites and they’d spent hours obsessively picking their own party’s flaws to pieces—which, to be sure, was no small task—without ever mentioning that the Tories had done anything showing the most modest amount of political nous. Moderates blamed Militant, folks further left blamed Kinnock and other such “careerists”, and everyone blamed the Gang of Four. But the idea that the Tories were at some level outplaying them seemed literally unthinkable.

I also have to note that the chorus of indignation about NuLabour throwing the Real Left overboard was very muted back in the days when Labour was crushing all before it and winning General Elections with 160-seat majorities. When I look at the Labour platform for, say, 2001, I don’t see that it’s much to the left of where the party is now. So.

Doug M.

Contrary to DDs original post, the Rudd government in Australia is significantly to the left of the previous (Keating) Labor government in rhetorical terms, particularly, since the GFC where Rudd has sought to pose the issues in terms of social democracy vs neoliberalism. By contrast, Keating was pretty open in his emulation of Thatcher.

Pr Q says:

And I think the government is somewhat to the left of Keating in policy terms as well – certainly it embraced Keynesian fiscal policy with enthusiasm, where Keating resisted in the recession of 1989-90.

In mid-2003 I made an early warning signal on this to my Right-wing friends. Pr Q, in late 2004, also noted the political significance of the “Liberals for Social Democracy” spending trend. By late 2006 “The Rise of Big Government Conservatism” had become the conventional wisdom of Right-wing think tanks.

Whats signficant about this is that both parties or sides of politics are shifting to the populist Centre. The Centre of politics for most OECD states is civic populism on cultural matters and economic populism on fiscal matters.

That is, as Pr Q noted, the populus is well to the Right of the elites on civic matters. And well to the Left of the elites on economic matters. In short the populus tends to national socialism whilst the elites tend to global capitalism. Shocking, no?

Pr Q noted this dirty little secret in NOV 2002.

the Australian elite is both more ‘economically rationalist’ and more ’socially progressive’ than the population as a whole.

What’s missing here is a story of how the right won. Yes, the far-left hurt the left. But the right also expanded, and it did so exactly by triangulating. They made peace with the welfare state and follow fiscally prudent policies. That’s why this doesn’t translate to the US, where the right has basically become a regional party of the south.

The trouble with Thoffinn’s interpretation is that it ignores the greatest electoral appeal of the Centre-Right which was cultural populism. It is a response to terrorism, immigration and integration problems exacerbated by “multiculturalism”.

I predicted this earlier in the noughties.

There is little likelihood that this political tendency will abate, it is secular, rather than cyclical, in tendency. The proof that the electorate has shifted several points to the Cultural Right is the astonishing success of the Far-Right accross the board throughout Europe.

A nice example of how dabbling with fashionable liberalism is a good way for Left wing intellectuals to damage Left wing parties.

One thing to consider, though, is that conservative parties actually are the natural governing parties of the most European nations. In France, during the Fifth Republic, there have been five conservative presidents (Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard, Chirac and Sarkozy) but only one Socialist, Mitterrand. In Germany, after WWII, CDU has held the Chancellor’s seat for 40 years and SPD for 20; in UK, Tories for 35 and Labour for 29; in Italy, well, everyone knows that story. Europe only appears to be left-wing from the perspective of right-wing America.

This is very bad news for the SPD, but I submit that it doesn´t really fit with your “throwing left-wing ballast overboad” model. After all, you´d expect the voters most directly affected (or, in many cases, betrayed) to be the ones holding a grudge. But that´s not the case here.

Note that young Germans surged to Die Linke and the Greens, but surged even harder to the FDP. That doesn´t seem to fit either.

Doug M.

You suggest that the “Communists!” argument is a figleaf. I disagree. Cooperation with Die Linke would be very obviously to the SPD´s benefit. But even at a state level—hell, even at a municipal level—they just can´t make themselves do it. The gag reflex just kicks in.

Doug M.

Sure. But it does significantly raise the barrier, and encourages people to think that a vote for a third party is wasted (except of course for all those Labour / Conservative voters who vote LibDem in swing seats to keep the other bunch out).

If the UK had a fair electoral system, then this wouldn’t happen, and party support could rise or fall to its natural level. Of course, if the UK had a fair electoral system, it would have been governed by coalitions for the past n years…

They are just more delusional, seriously buying into the lies the old guard only half beliefs but tells all the time to reinfurce a positive self image. The type of people that think life expectancy was higher in the East and that the Stasi was some regular secret service just like the one in the West.