In search of inspiration: could Britain build a progressive movement?

As Obamamania comes to Europe, the main focus is on what the Democrat nominee will say about US foreign policy and the future of the transatlantic relationship, and how it will affect the election race in the US.

But there is another debate bubbling under is what political campaigners in Europe can learn from the US election.

The Guardian reports on the debate which has followed David Lammy's recent Fabian speech.

Lammy, and other party thinkers such as Sunder Katwala, the Fabian general secretary, argue: "Obama is showing the political messages and methods of the 1990s now look very tired and out of date." Lammy warns that managerial language has alienated people and left the public disorientated. "For many people, the good things that we are doing sound more like a list of bullet points, rather than a mission to change society. So they switch off, or worse, become alienated from a party that looks like it has become part of the establishment."

Andrew Grice also wrote about this recently in The Independent.

Mr Brown will probably not welcome Mr Lammy's speech but he should. His criticism of "the politics of control", made when he took questions, could be seen as an attack on a micro-managing prime minister, but it wasn't. Nor was his rejection of "triangulation" – positioning between left and right but also "above" them to move forward.

Mr Lammy was calling for a cultural revolution in our politics to reconnect it with the people, as Mr Obama has done. New Labour, he admitted, was never "a movement that filtered down to ordinary people".

UPDATE: I have written a Comment is Free piece about whether Labour and the broader British left could create a movement politics of our own, and how this can be "boot-strapped" without a George W Bush or John Howard.

What could Labour learn from America?

It's been a really tough few time for Britain's Labour government, with defeats in the local elections, the election for London Mayor and by-elections. Many are looking enviously at the energy in the US campaign. But could there be more to it than that?

David Lammy MP gave a Fabian speech last week 'Lessons from America' arguing that both the Obama and McCain campaigns have important lessons for Labour.

I think it is one of the most candid and punchy political speeches given by a government minister in the last year. Lammy argued, taking questions, that, as the youngest member in the government, he should advocate an opening up of the cultures and structures of politics.

Lammy was pretty careful to speak warmly about both the Obama and McCain campaigns (and rather inventive in finding quite so many McCain reference points to do this), and to observe the formalities of government neutrality, but of course his personal views are very obvious.

In many ways much of the core argument is a statement of obvious truths, but it is sometimes difficult for government ministers to do that! And it is good to see some acknowledgement that we need to think radically about our message and mission, and the way we do politics too.

Some of the key arguments:
* The winning candidates are both political 'outsiders'.

"The real problem with the toff campaign was that it picked the wrong target. Because the issue is the political class, not the upper class."

* The 1990s looks very tired and dated.
"the use of triangulation, of defining yourself against your own party, of a managerial language which drains the values from policy also became a habit – a reflex –which alienated people in the party and left the public disorientated".

Labour needs a greater confidence in its distinctive collectivist mission and willingness to assert the values behind policies. Our achievements sometimes feel like bullet points on a list, not a mission for social change.

* Obama mobilised from below. He was prepared to let go. This is "light years away" from the culture of politics within the Labour Party, where the barriers to entry are much too high. Lammy went on to say that "New Labour was never a movement".

This is an analysis which is along similar lines to that of the Fabian pamphlet Facing Out.

As Andrew Sparrow says in his incisive blog post at the Guardian, I am sure that it is a contentful speech trying to open up a discussion about how we change how we do politics, rather than a Westminster critique of the PM, but the implications are pretty radical.

If these are the right lessons from the US, or about the culture of our politics, then the bigger question will be about how change can happen in practice.

Reblogging

After rather a long hiatus, I'm going to start reblogging here.

Obama seems well placed for the General Election race, with the Obama-Clinton reconciliation going as well or better than could be people expected.

Obama as McGovern?

You are a Democrat on the brink of your party's Presidential nomination, as long as you can calm down any late fears about electability. Which previous Democratic Presidential nominees would you be keenest to avoid being compared to?

I would suggest, in reverse order ...

5. Adlai Stevenson
4. John Kerry
3. Walter Mondale
2. Michael Dukakis
1. George McGovern

This is a pretty competitive race. I've let Adlai Stevenson pip Al Gore for the final spot. Stevenson lost twice. And, whatever the weaknesses of his campaign, Gore won. Sort of. Hubert Humphrey has faded from the frame.

EJ Dionne was worrying about whether Obama resembles Adlai Stevenson on Tuesday. Now John Judis asks if he has something of the McGovern factor.

if you look at Obama's vote in Pennsylvania, you begin to see the outlines of the old George McGovern coalition that haunted the Democrats during the '70s and '80s, led by college students and minorities.

Is Obama turning from a candidate with the ability to transcend the usual electoral blocs into a classic latte liberal insurgency Democrat?

Jonathan Chait has fired off a response to Judis, the most important point of which is that "Extrapolating from primary dynamics to general election dynamics is very dicey business".

However, it was not a good idea for Obama's campaign strategist David Axelrod to make a similar point in a way which could sound as though the campaign is conceding the white working-class vote to John McCain.

The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on these votes

Jay Cost's analysis suggests that Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvanian numbers don't change the voting dynamics enough from previous primaries. Still, the victory gives Clinton the opportunity of gaining momentum. The TV news narrative is about who won and who lost, rather than the expectations benchmarks of inside the beltway. That could make some difference in the next primaries. But she is some way short of giving the super-delegates reasonable cause to change the result.

Clinton's problem is that probably means turning up the volume again. But the charge that she went too negative in Pennsylvania was not confined to the media, and seems to have cost her votes.

The Clinton-supporting New York Times editorial page criticism of her 'low road to victory captures the fears of many Democrats that the last few weeks have made both candidates less attractive:

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

There was a fascinating set of interviews with the 'white house losers' - including Dukakis, Mondale and McGovern - in the Guardian's Weekend magazine at the end of last month. The next month may have a crucial impact on whether Obama can avoid joining their 'misery circle'.

Organising the movement

One of the themes of the Democrat primary has been 'the movement against the machine'. A Time Magazine piece back in the Ohio primary did a good job at capturing the two campaigns different philosophies about the politics of organisation.

The Obama method involves giving away the tools for supporters to campaign for him. For the conventional campaign, this means a significant loss of control. But the gain to Obama has been clear - in his fundraising advantage, his ability to engage and mobilise new voters, and his striking victories in each of the caucus states.

But it would be a mistake to think that the politics of inspiration and engagement does not need organising too, as Noam Scheiber's fascinating profile profile of Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe shows.

The marathon continues

It's something of a relief that the voters are finally getting another say in the Pennsylvania primary. The six weeks since the last primary have not been good for the Democrats, as the race has got more negative, and more trivial (not helped by the much critcised ABC candidates' debate)

Obama has firmed up as favourite for the nomination. But the long slog has exposed some weaknesses: his 'bitter' comments could prove a storm in a teacup or, in retrospect, seem like a clear clue about a Dukakis or Kerry style weakness. (EJ Dionne puts it well in a column asking whether Obama is JFK or Adlai Stevenson, or perhaps both. (It is an interesting contrast to today's politics of self-destruction to think that the Democrats ran the same candidate twice against Eisenhower).

Hillary Clinton is expected to win tonight. But the expectations game has her needing something like a 10 point victory. A race where she is favourite is more dangerous for her, since her campaign depends on achieving an 'away win' - overturning the odds in a state which Obama would have won - both to try to catch up on the popular vote, or put the issue in doubt for the super-delegates.

Obama seems to have weathered the storms without looking like imploding.

The excellent Jay Cost looks at the conventional wisdom and challenges some of it, defending Hillary Clinton's decision to stay in until the buzzer sounds.

Globe and Mail: The waiting game

As Gordon Brown prepares to head to the United States, Doug Saunders in Canada's leading quality newspaper, The Globe and Mail, says a good deal of international diplomacy is on hold in an analysis piece published on Saturday.

Around the world, Jan. 21, 2009, has become the key date in politics. Diplomats and senior officials in a half-dozen countries have told me frankly that little of any significance is going to happen until that fateful Wednesday when either Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama is inaugurated into office.

I am among the various think-tankers quoted in the piece - and there's even a plug for this modest blog.

"I think everyone's agreed that there is not going to be a literal Love, Actually moment — though there are certainly lots of people at Number 10 who would like to see that — but there is a real sense in this government that many important items on the international agenda are just going to have to wait until after Jan. 21," says Sunder Katwala, head of the Fabian Society, a venerable think tank with very close ties to the Brown administration (and keeper of a blog titled "Life after Bush").