Government Affairs Blog

Thinkers from different sides take stock

Perhaps is a coincidence but in the last week two new books have been published that take stock of where Britain and the world is politically. 

One is Nick Cohen’s “What’s Left?”  - www.nickcohen.net – and the other is Francis Fukuyama’s “After the Neocons – American at the Crossroads” - http://www.the-american-interest.com/contd/ - both writers approach the topic from very different perspectives but both are discussing the future of political action in the world we live in.

Cohen is a writer on “The Observer” and was a severe critic of New Labour until recently.  Fukuyama is an historian who famously predicted the Hegelian end of history and threw his lot in with the Neocons.  Fukuyama is a liberal, perhaps more in the British sense of the word than the American.  In the States it is Cohen who would have been given the title as the Americans equate liberal with social democrat or socialists. 

To put all this in some perspective a lot of disillusioned “Big Government” Democrats came round to the view that became characterised as the Neocon position.  But post-Iraq Fukuyama has distanced himself from this Chicago school of thought and has been asking big questions about how to do foreign policy. 

It seems that the events of the last few years are making those engaged in politics assess their own views and policies.  That makes both books worth a read.  This re-assessment can also be seen in last year’s launch of the Euston Manifesto – http://www.eustonmanifesto.org – a website of a “new democratic progressive alliance”. 

While we have seen a plethora of new Conservative think tanks emerge and the re-launch of the Liberal Democrat Centre for Reform as CentreForum we have yet to see an equivalent Cohen or Fukuyama re-examine policy in this way.  And if we have I, for one, have missed him or her.