It is, I am told, an old Chinese curse: 'May you live in interesting times'. And certainly we do, from Iraq to Iran to new labour to environmental change the list of troubling things in the world which we can and perhaps should be worrying about only seems to grow.
The fact that some commentators were predicting 'the end of history' 10-15 years ago now seems not only wildly but laughably optimistic:
"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." ( Francis Fukuyama "The End of History?", 1989)
'The universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government'? on reflection, that is not going so well, is it? Ideological imperialism is still imperialism, however much the current American administration might try to present it otherwise.
Fukuyama himself, meanwhile, had something of a change of heart, publishing this year 'After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads'. With polling day calling here in the UK, perhaps we need our own - After New Labour: the UK at the Crossroads, anyone?
Recent conversations with friends make clear the palpable sense of disappointment felt by even those most ardent supporters of new Labour when it came to power.
However, as a longtime student of politics I have felt obliged to point out one or two truths: First, when new Labour were elected on that wave of euphoria nine years ago, they may have had widespread support. However, I am willing to bet that if a comprehensive survey had been conducted of what, exactly, each of those widespread supporters were hoping the new administration would do, it would have revealed those hopes to be so widely disparate as to be impossible to please simultaneously.
The mechanics of winning an election is about building a coalition of support. The tragedy of representative democracy, perhaps, is that the majority of this coalition will inevitably be disappointed by the actions of the administration that once courted each part of them so assiduously. The maxim that you can't please all of the people all of the time brings cold comfort to former believers.
Second, the undignified stories that swirl around Mr. Blair's government, of affairs, of unknown 'gifts' of money, of black holes in accounts, are nothing new under the sun. They plagued the dog end of the last Conservative administration in the late nineties, as they plague Westminster now, not because the Conservatives, or Labour are corrupt parties per se, nor because Mr. Major or Mr. Blair are or have become bad leaders, but because to hold power itself is a malevolent and corrupting influence. As another old maxim says: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Not for nothing do successful democratic systems enshrine a separation of powers between institutions and offices held.
To the power maxim, perhaps we can add `the longer power is held the more those that hold it are corrupted'. It is for this reason the Presidency of the US, for example, is limited to two terms for any one person. Would a legal limit on the time anyone one person can be Prime Minister limit the current corruptions scandals that currently dog Mr. Blair's cabinet? Perhaps, perhaps.
As an undergraduate I wrote a finals essay which concluded by predicting the fall and further fall of the Conservatives - that their initial reaction to New Labour would be a shift further to the right, as in the 1980s, Labour initial reaction to Thatcherism had been a shift further to the left. Each mirror image reaction further alienated either party's mainstream supporters, taking both deeper into the electoral wilderness than either thought possible. The loss of subsequent elections and continuing lack of power - as invigorating as the holding of it is corrupting, caused Labour in the 1980s and 1990s and the Conservatives at the start of this centaury to be humbled, to soul search, to renew philosophical and political ideals.
As each of these suggestions has come true I now realize I could have also added to my essay a prediction of the inevitable corruption of the very human Labour figures who have now been holding power for too long. And, that it was always going to be impossible to please all the wishes of the coalition that voted for them in 1997.
Mr. Cameron, I'll wager, will gradually continue to steal a march on Labour. Perhaps the Labour party will, like the very ruthless Conservative party of 1990 go for a change of leader in the hope that, if you forgive the football metaphor, a new manager will revitalize the team. Whether the Conservatives win at the next election or the one after doesn't, in the end, matter very much. Somewhere very near is a high water mark, and then, the turning of the tide.
Even now it is possible to predict that any new administration which comes to power in the next few years to hold power for a subsequent decade or so will inevitably come to be corrupted by it - that sometime in the early 2020s stories of affairs, donations and unaccounted money will emerge again.
What is more interesting is whether any coalition of support a new administration constructs will be more realistic about what practical achievements are possible. Or, more accurately, whether we, the electorate, will have learned better than to have unrealistic expectations of our leaders both as political actors and as human beings. If it is to be possible to make a case for democracy in the wider world, maybe we first need a more accurate expectation of it ourselves. As Churchill said ` No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.' (Hansard, 1947)
For as predictions of the end of history fade to a naïve memory, current challenges from the chimera of `global terror' to the more real and complex issues of globalization, alongside the obvious but intractable fact of global warming loom large. We live in very interesting times indeed.
