EUSTON

I haven't written anything on the Euston Manifesto, partly because I was away when it was published, but mainly because it just didn't seem to be my fight. Which is, I've realized, a stupid way of looking at the question, because how the Left finally decides to re-define itself makes a difference to everyone else, regardless of where they stand on the spectrum. Besides, I spent much of my adult life as a left-winger of some sort or other, and I'm still burdened by that gut feeling that it's the place where I ought to belong. Most of my friends are still on the Guardianista fringes, which is why we have such a hard time talking to each other.

I'll be interested to see how Harry's Place readers respond to Danny Finkelstein's column. I agree with Danny insofar as it's a waste of time trying to hold a conversation with the true believers. But maybe one benefit of Euston will be that it will finally draw a line between rational members of the Left and the people for whom it is a substitute religion. If that happens maybe it will be possible to agree on what someone like Norm has in common with Melanie Phillips. (Socialists should read her essay Why I Am a Progressive and ask themselves how much of it they really disagree with.)

I've always hated that word "progressive" (maybe thanks to all those bad teenage memories of progressive rock) but perhaps it has its uses after all.

Comments

[yellerKat]

One word guaranteed to make Evelyn Waugh purple with rage was 'Progressive'. (Another was 'Picasso'.)

[hepzeeba]

Thanks for the links to Harry's Place and to Finkelstein's piece.

I'm a supporter of the Manifesto (and a leftist only in fond memory). The document, for all its flaws and weaknesses, has one overarching strength: its message is clearly anti-totalitarian and pro-democratic. And it draws no distinction between these two positions: it claims anti-totalitarianism as being the "right side of history," if you will.

It's an important argument.