Still, short term popularity is a poor indicator of historical perspective.  How will America’s 43rd president be judged by posterity?  The complaints of the left wing commentariat in America and elsewhere are largely irrelevant to the case.  Demands from, for example,  Paul Krugman in the New York Times that Bush and his cronies should face trial for their alleged crimes are near-hysterical and therefore dangerous.  Barack Obama has been wise to distance himself from such calls: persecution of one’s political opponents through the courts is democratically pernicious – not to mention highly distracting, as Bill Clinton can attest.   Similarly, the infamous verbal gaffes of this most misunderestimated president will be of little account in the longer term.

Ultimately the Bush presidency will be judged on the basis of America’s response to the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror it spawned and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In this context the very notion of a “War on Terror” has been questioned – notably by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, speaking in the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai (of all places) just days before the end of the Bush presidency.   Given the rather obvious timing, we can conclude that Miliband’s revelation tells us more about the British government’s determination to curry favour with the incoming American administration than it does about the merits or otherwise of the case.

Leaving aside, for now, the concept of the War on Terror itself, what has the Bush administration achieved for America and the world? 

For America it has meant that the terrorist atrocities of September 11th 2001 have not been repeated.  While Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have successfully launched bloody attacks across the world, the mainland United States has remained secure for the last seven years. 

For Afghanistan the picture is mixed: yes, the Taliban have been removed from power and something resembling a democratic government has replaced it.   The problems remain huge, however, and the Taliban although displaced are far from defeated.  The war in Afghanistan continues – in this case very much not a metaphorical war – no “peacekeeping” here.

On the other hand, the experience of Iraq – although long, difficult and bloody – appears finally to be approaching a favourable resolution.  The initial success of the invasion was followed by years of shambolic failure to establish peace and security for the people of Iraq as the so-called insurgency claimed thousands of lives.  Only the belated surge strategy has turned the tables and helped to create a situation in which coalition troops can envisage an eventual withdrawal as the Iraqi government takes full control.

Andrew Roberts comments:

The decisions taken by Mr Bush in the immediate aftermath of [9/11] will be pored over by historians for the rest of our lifetimes. One thing they will doubtless conclude is that the measures he took to lock down America’s borders, scrutinise travellers to and from the United States, eavesdrop upon terrorist suspects, work closely with international intelligence agencies and take the war to the enemy has foiled dozens, perhaps scores of would-be murderous attacks on America. There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush
after 9/11.

The next factor that will be seen in its proper historical context in years to come will be the true reasons for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in April 2003. The conspiracy theories believed by many (generally, but not always) stupid people – that it was “all about oil”, or the securing of contracts for the US-based Halliburton corporation, etc – will slip into the obscurity from which they should never have emerged had it not been for comedian-filmmakers such as Michael Moore.

Instead, the obvious fact that there was a good case for invading Iraq based on 14 spurned UN resolutions, massive human rights abuses and unfinished business following the interrupted invasion of 1991 will be recalled.

Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy-theory accusation: that he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British Government, Saddam’s own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course SIS and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.

Mr Bush assumed that the Coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN’s food-for-oil programme, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.

So, far from the bloodthirsty warmonger, George W. Bush is more correctly seen as the president who saw what needed to be done and did his level best to make it happen.   In acting on what was a widely held belief that Saddam Hussein held an arsenal of weapons of mass production which at some point he would probably use, Bush was merely going where others feared to tread.  Sadly, however, this is not the whole story.  Gerard Baker points out the downside:

Afghanistan started out well but, thanks in no small part to the delicate sensibilities of America’s allies, has descended dangerously close to failure. Iraq was, for several years, a disaster, compounded by the self-satisfied assurances that all was going perfectly well. Only when Mr Bush had been brought finally to the brink of the abyss did he begin to understand the need for change.

And yet history might still judge that Mr Bush’s political ideal – the eradication of the tyrannous political regimes that have nursed Islamist violence for centuries – was the right one. A democratic, pluralist Iraq, dismissed for years by Mr Bush’s critics as a pipe dream, is much closer to becoming a reality, with large potential consequences for the security of the whole world.

The proper indictment of Mr Bush, then, is not the silly idea that he was some uniquely evil tyrant, seeking selfishly to enlarge the American Government’s power around the world. It is that he was grotesquely, almost picturesquely, inept.

His Administration was disastrously unprepared for the consequences of toppling Saddam Hussein, genuinely believing, it seems, that democracy would fall happily into place. It is tragic that tens of thousands of lives had to be lost to demonstrate the absurdity of that naivety.

Sadly this is true – and the buck cannot lazily be passed to shadowy neocon strategists.  The problem with the Bush administration has never been with the aspiration, but with the execution, and it is on this basis that any executive must be judged.  Time will tell whether history will excuse these failings: George W. Bush may not have been a great president, but he was and is a good man.  Few of his detractors would have done better.

So first of all, let it be noted that Gaza is not the most densely populated area on earth, or anything like it.  The Gaza Strip covers some 360 square kilometres, into which are packed about 1.4 million residents.  This amounts to a density of about 4,000 people per square kilometre.  In other words, this is about the same density as London or Berlin, which are not particularly densely populated as big cities go.  The population density of Hong Kong and Singapore is more than 50% greater than that of Gaza.  Many major cities, including Paris and Tel Aviv, have still greater population densities.

That said, the population of Gaza is not uniformly distributed across the territory.  Much of it is crammed into a small number of urban areas, in which the population density will be very much higher.  The corollary of this is that in between these cities the population density is much lower. 

So why, then, rather than target the densely populated residential areas, doesn’t Israel bomb the bits in between?  Because that’s not where Hamas are, and that’s not where the rockets are coming from.  Hamas is sheltering behind civilian women and children in the cities, firing rockets from residential areas, safe in the knowledge that they are much more difficult to hit – and that the inevitable civilian casualties hand a massive propaganda weapon to Hamas. 

This is worth bearing in mind the next time anyone seeks to praise Hamas for its efforts in protecting the welfare of its citizens.  The reason there are massive civilian casualties in Gaza at the moment is because that’s the way Hamas wants it.

At the same time, there is a certain spirit of hope, symbolised by the election of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.  Yet even this hope is tinged with uncertainty.  The candidate who promised change appears to have metamorphosed into a president-elect practising extreme caution – a development as reassuring to America’s conservatives as it is disturbing to Obama’s supporters on the left.  What further twists and turns will there be when the new president takes office?

In times like these it is natural, even essential, to question and reassess fundamental assumptions.  Have the financial shocks of recent months discredited free-market capitalism in the same way that old-style socialism was discredited in the 1970s, and if so, where do we go from here?

The signals are indeed mixed.  The “solutions” towards which Gordon Brown has been guiding us and attempting to lead the international community are counter-intuitive.  A crisis caused by phenomenal levels of debt is being tackled primarily by massively increased borrowing.  While there is some logic in governments acting to counter the effects of the economic cycle, it is hard to see how in the long run this will help.  We are in the mess we are in because everybody up to including the people who inhabit the boardrooms of the world’s banks have forgotten to balance the books.  If this underlying problem is not tackled at some point, we must surely be heading for an even greater catastrophe at some point down the road.

The underlying problem is less a political one than a cultural or even a moral one.  Generally as a society we have become accustomed to divorcing actions from their consequences.  True liberalism relies upon self-discipline in order to function.  In the absence of self-discipline we have anarchy – in the worst sense of the word.

You have to go back a long way to find a time when capitalism faced its previous systemic crisis.  We are not talking about mere 1970s-style crises here; a difficult time but one where the fundamentals held steady.  We have to look back almost beyond living memory; indeed, before John McCain was born.  Now, that’s what I call ancient history.

The Great Depression brought us financial misery and political upheaval and led, indirectly, to the Second World War.  When crisis hits, some people go for the familiar and secure; others turn to extremes.  There is no way of telling with certainty which way it will fall.

The problem with historical parallels is that they only work with hindsight.  Predicting the future involves more than a little guesswork even if it is wrapped up in learned analysis.  If by chance some would-be dictator sporting a dodgy mustache should show up blaming the global financial crisis on a Zionist conspiracy, we might hope that the Europeans would be more sensible this time than to elect him into office.  The omens are not good, however; last week, 29% of Austrian voters gave their support to two far-right parties, a combined total that matched the support of the Social Democratic Party and surpassed that of the conservative People’s Party.

It would be easier to predict and face up to events if it was only one crisis but what we are faced with now is a convergence of crises.  The global financial crisis is only part of a wider story of political, social, demographic and environmental upheaval.  Stop me if I’m beginning to sound like a Marxist, but I am left wondering where the contradictions of capitalism will take us next.

There is, first and very obviously, a financial and economic crisis.  When Congress is forced to discuss a $700 billion rescue package to bail out the banks, it sounds like the Wall Street Crash once more.  This time it is to be hoped that intervention will stem the tide of collapse but it is clearly worrying.  In international terms, the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency has been under threat for some time.  What if China starts offloading its huge dollar reserves?  What if the oil-rich states of the Middle East start trading oil in euros?  The US has held the line so far but the twin budget and current account deficits in the United States make it vulnerable to decisions by other countries.

The optimistic scenario is to suggest that economic crises have a ‘corrective’ function in capitalism.  It is too bad if your job goes or you lose your house as part of the corrective mechanism but ultimately there is some truth in this.  The question is really whether Western capitalism, now fat and complacent, can withstand the force of its lean and hungry competitors in Asia.  This is particularly a question for Europe with its years of low growth, high social spending and excessive regulation.  Are we seeing in this dénouement a glimpse of the process by which the East will supplant the West?

Second, there are multiple crises in international relations.  It is beginning to feel like a new Cold War when we see Russia’s increasingly aggressive behavior toward its neighbors and its threats to the West to keep out.  One of the lessons of the Cold War was that other areas of the world became the scene for proxy conflicts between the superpowers.  At the same time, the West was compelled to prop up unpalatable regimes purely to avoid them coming under Soviet influence.  As the Russians seek to recover their hegemony over Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, Cold War politics may resurface once more.

Despite progress toward democracy and liberalization in many parts of the world, there are still too many states that harbor terrorists and pose a threat to their neighbors and to us.  At the top of the list is Iran, aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons, but Pakistan could be an even bigger headache if it falls to a Taliban-style regime.

One would hope that the European Union could somehow become a force for positive change but it is too hopelessly divided on foreign and security policy and too often fails to stand alongside the United States.  As the EU is divided, so too the West as a whole is divided.

Third, there is a longer term social and demographic crisis in much of the West that is eating away at society.  Our populations are aging, particularly in Europe.  As Mark Steyn has observed, the extended vacation from reality that has been Europe’s elaborate welfare system is going to plunge into a crisis of affordability.  Put simply, Europe will have a decline of people of working age relative to pensioners, which means falling revenues and rising costs.

The problem, as many have observed, can be partially resolved by immigration, but that only provides temporary respite and may in any case dry up as Europe’s economic prospects wither relative to those in Asia.  Moreover, the growth of the Muslim population in Europe coincides with fears that Europe’s liberal institutions are being challenged by radical Islamists who are opposed to the fundamental values of the West.  Societal stagnation beckons.

Fourth, there is an energy and environmental crisis.  While the US Congress blocks further oil production off the coast and in parts of Alaska, the US pays out $700 billion a year to foreign oil producers.  These include some of the most authoritarian regimes in the world.  Europe’s increasing reliance on Russian oil and gas makes it difficult for many EU states to criticize Russia, hence the EU’s cap-in-hand approach to Russia’s intervention in Georgia.  The West’s ability to intervene to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons is partly crippled by fears of what a major military conflagration in the Middle East would do to oil prices and hence the world economy.

Energy security is a vital issue, not merely because it makes Western states dependent upon their potential adversaries, but also because many Western states are facing the likelihood of severe shortages of supply.  Opposition to nuclear power has stalled the development of nuclear energy in states like Germany and Britain, yet these countries need nuclear energy more than ever now because they are also committed to tackling CO2 emissions.  That brings us to global warming.

Ah yes, we had almost forgotten global warming amidst the other crises.  There are a lot of skeptics who dispute the causes of global warming as well as possible responses, but few doubt that there is a warming trend.  If the trend continues then at the very least we can expect profound effects on agricultural production and migratory patterns, leading to famine and social conflict, and some predict vastly more dire consequences.

Policy responses have so far been inept.  The ill-judged subsidies which have seen arable land turned over to biofuel crops, a policy that has helped cause rocketing food prices, will hardly (so it is claimed) even dent the prospects of global warming.  Governments that wish to tackle CO2 emissions will have to embrace nuclear energy but the responses have so far been underwhelming.

There is, lastly, a more profound potential crisis over the horizon.  It is not yet a crisis but it could become one.  This crisis goes to the heart of what America’s place is in the world and how it works to uphold the values of freedom, democracy and human rights.  I would call this crisis a crisis of faith; not religious faith in this instance, but about America’s belief in itself.  It is expressed in the view that America should not engage with the world but should instead retreat into itself; the view that says that American workers can’t compete in the globalized world or that the US can’t win in Iraq.

The greatest threat to America now would be a loss of nerve.  The British suffered a collapse of confidence after the Suez debacle in 1956, though in truth Suez was not the cause of Britain’s impotence but only its confirmation.  The sense of defeatism and compromise in Britain’s Foreign Office has never gone away despite the efforts of leaders like Thatcher and Blair.  A confident America, with support from its allies, can still be the world’s leading power.  A defeatist and isolationist America, by contrast, could only bring about the ultimate crisis of the West that would engulf us all.

So here are the stakes if you are even mildly of an apocalyptic persuasion: a collapse of Western economic power, civil strife, famine, environmental degradation, a return to the Cold War and a politically impotent West.  For the politically inclined, there has not been a more exciting (or dangerous) time for decades.  It almost makes me wish I were a Marxist.

Holocaust denial is controversial as a criminal offence, since some civil libertarians, and certainly all Holocaust deniers, assert that to criminalise Holocaust denial is an unreasonable restriction on freedom of speech, and a transparent attempt to limit public debate. In fact, the justification for the criminal prosecution of Holocaust denial rests on other grounds than that of freedom of belief or expression. Holocaust denial is not objectionable because it gets history wrong – plenty of people do that all the time. Nor is it so regarded because it falsifies the historical record, per se. Ultimately, Holocaust denial is regarded as criminal in some jurisdictions because it cannot be sustained without recourse to anti-semitic conspiracy theories (If the Holocaust was a hoax, then to perpetrate such a hoax over a period of decades would require a phenomenal amount of money, organisation and media control – it therefore presupposes an international conspiracy in the interest of the Jews.). As such, Holocaust denial can and should be regarded as a special case of incitement to racial hatred against Jews.

Even the most ardent defenders of freedom of expression will in general concede that incitement to hatred or incitement to any illegal activity is a legitimate concern of the law. However, we have clarified already that it is not the denial of the Holocaust itself (despicable as that undoubtedly is) but the implication that lies behind it, that makes Holocaust denial “criminal”. There are reasons for thinking that it may be preferable to do away with the charge of Holocaust denial altogether, and prosecute it instead under a charge of incitement to racial hatred (this would be the charge under British law – other jurisdictions will presumably have similar legislation on the books).

It is reasonable to ask why anyone would take the trouble to make this distinction. Holocaust denial as a theory has few defenders other than the anti-Semites on the political extremes of right and, occasionally, the left.  Isn’t this just a question of splitting hairs?

It would be, but for the fact that legalistic innovations designed for a particular circumstance have a way of becoming generalised. This is certainly true of the concept of “denial”.

Try this:

The primary reason we are experiencing this peculiarly American phenomenon of evolution denial (the doppelganger of Holocaust denial), is that a small but vocal minority of religious fundamentalists misread the theory of evolution as a challenge to their deeply held religious convictions.

You never heard of evolution denial?  It’s what you call creationism when you want to associate it with the Nazis.  It doesn’t matter that creationists aren’t trying to kill anyone – or that they don’t have any hidden agenda (they’re pretty up-front about what they believe in) – no conspiracy theory here.  It’s enough that someone thinks they are wrong and is agitated enough about it to try to shut them up, or at any rate discredit them.

Maybe that isn’t such a big deal – unless you are running for vice-president or have just lost your job because somebody in the press has misrepresented your views.  But what about this…

ExxonMobil is the world’s most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what’s its strategy?

The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company’s official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled “junk science”. The findings they welcome are labelled “sound science”.

For a start, let it be noted that ExxonMobil is a legal organisation.  It sells oil, which is not only legal, but a fairly essential activity.  We are not talking about a Colombian drug cartel here.  It does, however, make a very large amount of money, and the allegation George Monbiot is making above is that it is paying various organisations which have a particular view about climate change (which also is not illegal).  Let’s not beat about the bush – what Monbiot is talking about is climate change denial.  The implication moreover, is that many or all of these bodies would not be making these points if they had not effectively been bought by ExxonMobil.  Otherwise, why bother to throw cash at them?  It is reasonably common these days to see it suggested that scientists or other interested parties with an unorthodox view of climate change are in the pay of the oil companies.

Does any of this sound familiar at all?  A vastly wealthy industry on an international scale using its money and influence to manipulate the media?   Doesn’t that sound rather like a global conspiracy to you?  We’ve yet to see anyone try to rope the Jews into this one.  Maybe it will happen one day – or maybe there just aren’t enough Jews in Texas to make it fly.

Let’s take a step back.  On the one hand we have Holocaust denial, which promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on the back of a “revisionist” view of history (and which can justifiably be prosecuted as a form of incitement to racial hatred).  On the other hand we have concepts such as evolution denial (which is a synonym for creationism and useful only as a smear tactic) and climate change denial – which amounts to a conspiracy theory in its own right – and which poisons the well of public debate.  Ultimately, Holocaust denial itself is trivialised by such misuse of the concept.  Sadly, denial is still not a river in Egypt.  We can well do without it.

David T at Harry’s Place cites Yasmin as an example of how…

In a free and pluralist society, an awful lot of people move backwards and forward between different iterations of their identity. One generation is not like the next.

The inference we are supposed to draw is that Muslims in western society (in this context, particularly British society), are quite capable of integration and assimilation into the wider community.  This is what other groups have done down the centuries – is there any reason to suppose that Muslims should be any different?

All of this has implications for the proposition, advanced by various commentators, including Mark Steyn, that Europe is undergoing a process of Islamification driven by demographic change: catastrophically declining birth rates in Western Europe – particularly among the indigenous population, contrasting with much higher birthrates among Muslim communities (many of whom are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants), and combining to deliver a very rapid demographic shift in favour of a very greatly increased Muslim population.

David T lists three premises which seek to characterise, but largely misrepresent, this theory:

How is this going to happen?

·         First of all, the birth rates of Muslims will outstrip those of non-Muslims indefinitely.

·         Secondly, all Muslims will demand, and subject themselves to Sharia.

·         Thirdly, people will convert to Islam, but nobody will leave Islam.

Each of those premises is dubious.

The first premise is indeed false (or most probably false).  The birthrates in Muslim communities are already falling and will probably match those of the majority community within a couple of generations.  However, that still gives a fair amount of time for fairly rapid growth in the Muslim community as a proportion of the total population.

The second proposition is equally false.  The degree of adherence to Shari’a law is variable within and across Islamic countries – at least insofar as the citizens of these countries have any choice in the matter.

The third proposition is the most interesting and the most significant.  Currently approximately three percent of the British population is Muslim.  Current demographic trends would suggest that this proportion will increase to somewhere between ten and fifteen percent within the next fifty years or so, depending on the impact of additional immigration.  The other unknown factor is what the effect of conversion will be.

Walking through some of the great cities of Northern England, as I do reasonably frequently, it is striking these days not that so many women are wearing hijab, but that so many of the faces under the hijab are white.  For Islam is not an Arab religion, nor is it an Asian religion or a “Black” religion.  Islam is a religion with a global mission and, like Christianity, it assumes a global mandate.  The call to Islam is being heard and accepted by an increasing number of the ethnic majority in British society.

The big questions here are “Why?” and “How strong will this trend become?”.  The why is reasonably straightforward.  There are several reasons why someone might find Islam an attractive proposition as a religion.

Firstly (and most destructively), many on the far left of politics, having discovered that their old socialist gods are made of clay, have discovered political Islamism as an alternative outlet for their totalitarian predilections.  The ironically-named Respect Coalition led by George Galloway MP was founded as a marriage-made-in-Hell between the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party, a bunch of Galloway groupies and another group of Islamists.  Although Respect has recently collapsed (as the SWP control-freaks found riding the tiger of Islamism rather too draining of their revolutionary energy), the ideological convergence has yet to run out of steam.  The (largely unrequited) love affair that many leftists have with Hamas and Hezbollah, and the continuing and alarming rise of anti-Semitism within the mainstream left are both disturbing indications of this.

Secondly, mainstream Christianity in Britain has largely given up the ghost.  The Church of England is largely paralysed by squabbles over gay rights and women bishops.  Other churches are in catastrophic decline.  Meanwhile the mosques are heaving.  Moreover, the government, the political establishment and the media are willing to give Islam an easy ride whereas Christianity, its beliefs and institutions are simply regarded as an easy target.

For example, back in 2005 the BBC televised a performance of Jerry Springer – The Opera, a comedy show which included, among other things, a representation of Jesus in a nappy.   Christian activists in the UK rarely get outraged about anything, but in this case the result was pandemonium, driven not least by the suspicion that if it had been Mohammed in a nappy then the Jerry Springer Opera would have got nowhere near a television screen, or indeed a stage. Compare and contrast the uproar among the so-called liberal elites about the publication of certain Danish cartoons…

Sooner or later, the logic of this situation will begin to sink in.  Muslims get some respect for their beliefs (even if this respect derives to no small extent from fear).  Christians get none and therefore regularly get a kicking – in fact sometimes they get the kicking which would otherwise be given to Muslims – the gay police association produced a pamphlet denouncing religious hate crimes against gay people.  The booklet had a picture of the Bible on the cover.  What happens when those of a traditional frame of mind see Muslims articulating their beliefs and worldview (more or less), and getting respect for it, while the Christian churches spend all their time in pointless handwringing and getting a regular pasting for their pains?  Perhaps some of those pretty parish churches in the shires will be mosques in a few decades time.

Thirdly, we live in a time of unprecedented social breakdown.  The family as an institution is in real trouble.  In some council housing estates fathers are an endangered species.  Many young people are rootless, without hope or prospects, without direction or even much of an education.  Islam offers a structure to life, a goal for the future, membership in an extended family and community.  Particularly when so much of what passes for Christianity seems to have lost the plot, would it really be a surprise to see these people turn to Islam as a solution in their lives?

The fourth part of “Why?” addresses the second question.  How strong will this trend become?  We can’t at this stage know.  Western societies generally have lost their sense of direction.  There is no longer much of a sense that we believe in the superiority or even of the worth of the liberal democracies for which our grandparents’ generation had to shed blood.  We won’t stand up for freedom and human rights abroad.  When our governments try to free an ancient and noble people from an appalling dictatorship, millions of numbskulls take to the streets to chant “Not in my name!”  The protagonists of the culture wars have sought to erase all memory of what our societies stand for – and in its place all we have is a blank page – tabula rasa – anything goes.  The point is that the page can’t remain blank forever.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  If we no longer know what we are for, then somebody else will step in who does.

The only question is when.  What will the tipping point be?  What will be the trigger?  A major environmental disaster?  Another war?  A collapse of the global financial system perhaps…

But you know all this, don’t you?  So why should it be necessary to recite in detail the circumstances surrounding the defining historical event of our age?  The sad fact is that memories fade with time – painful memories even more so.  September 11th 2001 was the day the world changed – and it still hurts.

Mark Steyn used to say (and possibly still does) that there are September 10th people and September 11th people.  The September 11th people got the point of the 9/11 attacks.  The September 10th crowd never did.  Fortunately George W. Bush was one of the September 11th people, and the story of the George W. Bush presidency is the story of 9/11 writ large.    But now that presidency is nearing its end.  Where do we go from here?  If we have moved from a September 10th world to a September 11th world, how do we get to September 12th?  Do we have to live under the metaphorical shadow of the Twin Towers forever?

That is the question which underpins this year’s presidential election campaign in the United States.  The watchword is “change”.  Things must not be as they have been.  Seven years of a War on Terror have left the American political establishment divided, the people exhausted.  The people are looking for some good news for a change, and Barack Obama has positioned himself as the man to provide it.  But, telegenic as he may be, effective as he is as an orator, inspirational as he is as the first African-American presidential nominee for a major party in American history – what has he got to say?  Has the danger illuminated by 9/11 passed?  Have the goals of the War on Terror been achieved?  Has democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan been secured?  While progress has been achieved on all fronts, there remains much work to be done.  Iraq in particular is turning into a success story at last, as the surge strategy introduced last year continues to bear fruit.  Afghanistan continues to give cause for concern, with the Taliban resurgent.  Periodical attacks by Al-Qaeda or their surrogates continue, and other terrorist plots are regularly uncovered.  Iran continues its inexorable progress towards the status of a nuclear weapons state.  Russia is becoming increasingly belligerent, and China increasingly powerful.  What use are soothing words amd pious rhetoric against the threats faced by America and the free world?

Fortunately, there is another choice for change.  Few serving politicians in any major democracy can match John McCain’s record of courage, service and sacrifice.  The former prisoner of war who suffered torture during five years of captivity in Vietnam embodies the virtues about which others (including, particularly, his opponent in the election) can only wax lyrical.  Consequently, in discussing the dangers we face, and the requirements of national and international security, few can match the moral authority of the Republican candidate.  If America must go to war elsewhere, we can be confident that President McCain will not shirk the responsibility.  It is principally McCain’s personal experience and independence of mind which guarantees that a McCain administration would be no mere continuation of the Bush years.  Who can imagine that the excesses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay would have been tolerated by a McCain White House?  McCain’s maverick reputation as a man who will take on his own party if necessary (and his selection of a running mate with a similar reputation in her own state), together with a willingness to work with politicians of the opposing party both identify a man who puts patriotism and principle before party affiliation.  Again the contrast with Obama and Biden, both Democratic machine politicians, is marked.

So whichever man wins the presidential election, change is on the cards for the American people.  The choice, however, is stark.  For all the failures of planning and execution during the last seven years, George W. Bush has taken his country in the right direction for the right reasons.  And yet the world is still a dangerous place.  Americans must choose whether to face their challenges with fortitude and honour, or take refuge in prevarication and soft options which may not be so soft after all.  For while the world of September 11th was a difficult and tragic one, the world of September 12th may not be any easier.

The Cameron foreign policy is still particularly opaque, even though this is a subject on which he has not been silent:

“We should accept that we cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun,” he said in Islamabad. “We cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet and we should not try. Put crudely, that was what was wrong with the “neo-con” approach and why I am a liberal Conservative, not a neo-Conservative.”

“Put crudely” is correct.  However, the statement is crude enough to win over most of the Conservative Party and others on the political right, to say nothing of the many others in the country who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There are some more sophisticated voices on the right, however.  Here’s Helen Szamuely of the Bruges Group (an anti-EU pressure group), on Cameron’s comment quoted above.

This is, sadly, unmitigated rubbish. There are no particular rules as to how democracy is arrived at and the methods he dismisses were the very ones that were used to impose democracy on Germany, Austria, Italy and Japan. They seem to have worked quite well and would have worked with other countries such as Hungary if the Soviet Union had not intervened. As one contributor to the discussion points out, those methods did no harm to Serbia in the long run, either.

More to the point, however, is the Boy-King’s platitudinous insistence that he is not a “neo-con”, an attitude that goes down very well with many of the more vociferous members of the party if the discussions on ToryBoy Forum are anything to go by.

There is an insistent cry that the Conservative Party, when in government (since it is not going to be in power, in view of who legislates for this country), should distance itself from the “neo-cons”. In fact, anyone who points out that, no matter who is in government on either side of the Pond, our closest and greatest ally is the United States, like Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home, is immediately described in slightly hysterical tones as being a “neo-con”.

The truth is that neither David Cameron nor those members of his party who shriek for the need to abandon the “neo-con” path have the slightest idea what that means or who the “neo-cons” are. It does not mean simply “more conservative” or “aggressively conservative”. The people who can be described as “neo-con”, such as Richard Perle or Irving Kristol, have usually followed a certain political path that started reasonably far on the left. Therefore, the term cannot seriously be applied to anyone else, even if they think the war in Iraq is a sensible and successful way of dealing with the problem of international jihad and terrorism.

Most certainly it cannot be applied to President Bush or his closest advisers or to John McCain or Sarah Palin, though they all support the war. Senator McCain was one of the first advocates of the now obviously successful surge in Iraq, which is not a shambles or a disaster, despite what numerous Conservatives in Britain maintain.

I shall pass over the implication, too often voiced that through the “neo-cons” the Jewish lobby successfully controls America’s foreign policy as there is no evidence for any of that. Support for Israel comes from different sources, which both my colleague and I have discussed at length on EUReferendum.

The trouble from the Conservative Party’s point of view is that this is the wrong way of going about the task of developing a foreign policy. Both the leadership and various vociferous members are looking at structures rather than content, the method normally used by the European Union in the furthering of its aims, particularly the development of the common foreign and security policy.

In their obsession with having to distance themselves from the poorly understood and, as it happens, not that important “neo-cons”, the Conservatives are losing sight of certain matters. Foreign policy does not emerge from dislike of certain groups and should not grow from the right-wing envy and dislike of the United States. If the Tories think that the US and the rest of the Anglosphere are not this country’s natural allies, they should come up with alternative ideas and simply talking vaguely of China and India (an Anglospheric country), as the Shadow Foreign Secretary did in a major speech in February 2007 is not enough.

Furthermore, problems of international relations and crises that occur from time to time, like the one that was precipitated by Russia when it decided to invade Georgia because the latter was not sufficiently enthusiastic about being in the former’s sphere of influence, requires an understanding of what is going on and an opinion of what is best for Britain and for the West. If the Conservative Party decides that foreign policy consists of looking at what they think those much-derided and completely unknown “neo-cons” do and then do the opposite, the country under Mr Cameron’s government will speedily find itself in the sort of messy, anomalous position it has achieved under Mr Brown.

The above demonstrates that hostility to the neoconservative label is far more evident than hostility to the ideas – although the ideas themselves are politically problematic.  Tory foreign policy has never really followed a neoconservative path – it has, traditionally, more closely resembled the realpolitik of the Major years – generally non-interventionist and prepared to let the rest of the world go hang if necessary, provided that Britain itself is not under threat.  It must be a concern that Cameron’s “liberal conservative” foreign policy is simply a cover for a return to a more isolationist stance – which would be bad news not just for the Conservative Party, but also for the country and the world.

We should recognise that Tony Blair was an outstanding Labour prime minister who has now departed the British political scene and has no future part to play. His legacy, on the basis of what we inherited in 1997, is historically important, but it does not define the way forward from 2008 onwards. It is worth summarising his approach to government.

In international affairs, Blair stood for a liberal interventionist strategy in our increasingly interdependent world. This attracted fierce criticism in relation to Iraq, but general support on the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. It led him to work with the power of the United States rather than join the anti-American claque, even when George W Bush demonstrated crippling incompetence or opposed British policy. And in the European Union, Blair’s good intentions turned to dust, so that Britain is now more remote from the centre of European power than ever.

Liberal interventionism must be underpinned by military force, but its moral authority was undermined by the glacial progress in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the ill-considered determination to renew Trident. The rise of terrorist atrocities, including London in 2005, identified Tony Blair with tough efforts to strengthen security, sometimes at a perceived cost to liberty. In some circles, this damaged his reputation, despite the series of progressive constitutional reforms that modernised Britain. As for the economy, the achievement of the Blair-Brown leadership was to demonstrate, for the first time ever, that Labour could run the economy well and promote general prosperity. The contrast with their crisis – encircled Labour predecessors is stark.

This enormous success was accomplished by insulating economic decisions of long-term significance from short-term political pressures. In monetary policy, the institutional means was Bank of England independence. The fiscal method was creation of, and adherence to, the various “golden rules”.

Tony Blair saw this achievement as central, the foundation of his political success. Indeed, he wanted to reinforce this long-term economic rigour by locking the British exchange rate in to the euro, though disagreement with his chancellor made this impossible when joining would have been feasible.

Economic “Blairism” was also defined by opposition to increasing taxes. This reflected the Reagan/Thatcher economic consensus, reinforced by Labour’s 1992 shadow Budget, that tax-raising political parties lost elections. This belief underpinned the disastrous and unfair basic-rate cut, financed by abolition of the 10p rate, of Gordon Brown’s 2007 Budget.

Social policy is the area in which the adjective “Blairite” is most widely and pejoratively used – often inaccurately linked to the word “privatise”. In fact, Blair believed that divisive private alternatives would spread within education and health unless the quality of public services and public life was significantly improved.

This meant prioritising the interests of public-service users and strengthening the state in some areas (for instance, antisocial behaviour). Empowering schools and hospitals, and extending user choice, would maximise public-service efficiency and help prevent the incursion of profit-driven alternatives.

This approach challenged some vested interests and it certainly created political tensions, not least with his deputy prime minister and chancellor. In the end, social change did not come quickly or consistently enough and, despite very major successes, reform in some areas was patchy.

This past week, Alistair Darling rightly said that the “coming 12 months will be the most difficult 12 months the Labour Party has had in a generation”. Blairism as a concept offers little by way of rescue. It is certainly not a guide to action. Equally, however, it is inaccurate and misleading to dismiss as some kind of Blairite rump those who fear that Labour’s current course will lead to utter destruction at the next general election.

There is no coherent Blairite ideology. Many of us who were proud to be members of Tony Blair’s government had differing approaches even then, and certainly propose differing prescriptions now.

This is, in general, a fair summary of Tony Blair’s approach to government and his achievements.  Unsurprisingly, some of it is viewed through rose tinted spectacles: we are only now paying the price of New Labour’s “long-term economic rigour”, even if (as Clarke hints, none too subtly) much of the blame for this lies with Chancellor Brown.   Furthermore, there are downsides which Clarke doesn’t even appear to recognise: the decidedly mixed benefits of the Human Rights Act; we now have Freedom of Information but Freedom of Speech is more circumscribed than it has been for generations; the damage to social cohesion wrought by increasingly ghettoised communities, some elements of which are now seeking to declare effective autonomy from the British state, notably through increasing demands for the recognition of Shari’a law, even from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

On the other hand, Blair clearly did have a coherent ideology.  It was not perfect – indeed in terms of domestic policy the failures were in some cases marked – but it was driven by clear principles, even if many of these principles were not readily perceived at the time.  Blairism was such a radical departure from traditional Labourism that it is hardly surprising that many of us were slow to perceive the features, positive and negative of the new ideological landscape.

The most radical change of all for a Labour Party whose defence policy throughout the 1980s was based principally around the replacement of Britain’s nuclear deterrent with a white flag, was the adoption of a liberal interventionist foreign policy based on ethical principles.  Quite what those ethical principles turned out to be would have been a surprise to most Labour Party members in 1997 – not excluding Blair’s first foreign secretary, the late Robin Cook, who resigned from Blair’s cabinet over the invasion of Iraq.

Can we therefore view this apparent recantation from an arch-Blairite as the end of the Blair doctrine?  Clearly not – there are those in the Labour Party and elsewhere who are more than happy to espouse what are, effectively, classical liberal, neoconservative or “progressive” principles.  Charles Clarke has a different end in view: the necessity of averting electoral disaster for Labour requires new leadership.  By eschewing Blairism he is recognising that the Labour Party which toiled under a Blair regime which it simultaneously admired and despised will not travel down the same road again.  Blairite principles may live on, but the Blairite ascendancy within the Labour Party is over – at least for now.