The ebullient mid-20th century British Labour Party panjandrum, Richard Crossman, used to rub his hands with glee as he contemplated the endless drama and unpredictability of political life. For Crossman, politics was an antidote to boredom like no other.
How he would have relished the extraordinary twists and turns of recent political events. Who could possibly have foreseen the dizzying speed with which the leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown, would go from being a popular new prime minister to being one of the most unpopular on record to being in some measure restored to favor as a result of his handling the banking crisis that has engulfed not just Britain but the whole world?
New Labour, the revisionist Labour project that Brown devised along with Tony Blair was premised on acknowledging the triumph of neoliberal economics during the 1980s under the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. New Labour represented the wholesale repudiation of the party’s socialist heritage. Its architects were especially anxious to efface memories of the disastrous 1983 Labour Party manifesto that pledged to take large parts of the British economy into public ownership. Ridiculed as the “longest suicide note in history”, it duly resulted in the party suffering crushing defeat at the hands of Mrs. Thatcher. Yet now Brown could be said to be belatedly honoring the notorious “loony left” of the 1983 manifesto.
For years, Brown himself has been an ardent champion of free market capitalism. What an irony that he should now be behaving like a text-book socialist — while receiving praise for setting an example of state intervention for governments all over the world to follow. That at the same time, he has brought back into government his old adversary, the Labour “spin doctor” Peter Mandelson is another feature of the current surreal aspect of things; it is also a tribute to Brown’s realpolitik, his implacable determination to survive at all costs. None of this means that Brown looks as if he might after all lead his party to victory in the next general election. The Labour Party still trails the Tory Party in the opinion polls, even if polls suggest that a large section of the British public feels safer with Brown and his colorless Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling presiding over the economy. There are many who are itching to punish Brown, believing that he bears much of the responsibility for encouraging the excesses that led to some British banks issuing self-certifying mortgages to clients with no ability ever to repay them. They are unlikely to be impressed by Brown’s claim that the economic crisis is of wholly American origin. Nor will they quickly forget his empty boast that he had abolished “boom and bust”.
For the moment, though, it is as if the world has turned upside down, with Brown’s fortunes mystifyingly improved. Yet in one respect at least, the order of things appears all too familiar. Last week, as the world economy lurched out of control, Brown nevertheless found time to keep up the Labour Party’s long tradition of pledging unswerving loyalty to the State of Israel. Indeed, in an address to the Jewish Charity UJIA’s annual dinner, Brown proclaimed that Jewish values, the Judaic “ethic of good will” and “investment in hope”, were precisely the values that will enable human beings to cope with hard times.
So fervent was Brown in his praise of what Israel stands for, remarked the Jewish Chronicle, that he might have been speaking as the prime minister of Israel. Certainly, you would never have guessed from his speech that Israel is anything less than an exemplary nation or that among Jews themselves there is an increasingly vocal minority who, far from identifying Israel with investment in hope, regard it as a state whose chief investment is in conflict. This October has seen the publication in Britain of a powerful collection of essays by Independent Jewish Voices, Jewish dissenters who deplore Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians and who, in February 2007, signed a charter protesting against the Zionist presumption that Israel speaks and acts in the names of all Jews.
“When good people of moral purpose come together, they can make a difference”, Brown enthused to his audience at the UJIA dinner. Perhaps this will yet prove to be true of Independent Jewish Voices, though if the Jews in question do succeed in making a difference, it will be no thanks to the present Labour leader. It says much about Brown’s sense of priorities that, in the midst of national emergency, he made a special point of reaffirming that the British Labour Party remains what at its highest level it has always been: A vehicle of Zionism whose paramount concern is not justice for the Palestinians but the security of the State of Israel.
