OH, FOR CLEARER times when men were men and Tories were vermin. Each child born alive was either a little Red or a little Blue, with a few Cornish vacillators wearing the awkward yellow favours of the in-betweenies. Oceans of blood separated us. The Blues loved the Americans, we Reds (sotto voce) thought that the Russians got a bad press. They were for no taxes and lots of poverty, we were for massive taxes and no wealth. They were turned on by soldiers and the Bomb, we were turned on by women with peace symbols painted on their bare breasts. They were for Europe, and then against it. We were against Europe, and then for it. You could usually take someone’s opinion on a single issue, and from it extrapolate her entire world-view.

For years, of course, these allegiances have been breaking up, but the essential divide has been thought to remain. It’s there in the common-place that Tony Blair is right-wing for a Labour man, or that David Cameron is left-wing for a Tory. But the truth has been dawning on many of us for some time now that this way of dividing the political world is an anachronism. It no longer fits the facts. When I look at the candidates for Parliament in my own constituency, the Labourness, Libdemness or Toryness of them no longer seems to be the main question. What I want to know is whether they are a progressive or a reactionary.

Do I want a Labour MP who argues that there should be no private money involved in health provision and that the structure of the NHS should be the same in 2008 as it was in 1948? That there should be only one type of school? That the greatest enemy to mankind is the United States of America? Do I want a Conservative whose main concerns are to keep immigration low, to prevent house-building and to preserve the privileges of motorists? Do I want a Liberal Democrat whose central policy planks are to stop car clamping and prevent ID cards?

I am not starry-eyed about the history of the Left. It has its triumphs and its disasters. But it used to be about the future and how to improve the lot of humankind. Not any more. Liberation has been replaced as the key concept by Resistance. The word reproduces itself through modern left literature, like a Sylvanian family on fertility drugs. Globalisation is to be resisted, as is neoliberalism (flexible labour markets, movement of capital etc) as is neoconservatism. Tesco mini-stores are to be resisted, as are the Americans in Iraq. It is emblematic of that change that the Palestine Liberation Organisation is no longer the organisation of choice for fashionable leftists, having been replaced by the Islamic Resistance, better known as Hamas. And the new heroes aren’t those creating new societies, but those nationalists, like the populist Venezuelan, Hugo Chávez, who put two fingers up at the composite enemy, Bushanblair.

Over on the Right the consequences of change are creating a thoroughly enjoyable series of moral panics. Thatcherism, for a while, promoted an opening up to the world. But in her own late premiership the woman herself hardened into a reactionary, determined to protect a particular vision of middle-class England from the ravages of change. Too late. Or, rather, hardly possible. Now her self-styled successors play hunt the foreign rapist with every new edition of the Telegraph or the Mail. In the short term this is bad for Mr Blair, but in the long-term it’s difficult for Mr Cameron, because it isn’t where he wants to be, down among the Nimbys and the Keep-’em-out brigade.

That there is sharp division on what was once called the Right is illustrated by recent events in America. George Bush wants an amnesty for 12 million or so illegal immigrants and is being fought all the way by Republicans who believe that the country is full. Bush is comfortable with a company from the United Arab Emirates running some more American ports, but many Republicans oppose him on “security grounds”. They too seek common cause with sections of the Left over “ outsourcing” — otherwise known as the bloody cheek that these foreigners have in competing with us. So-called palaeoconservatives want out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, out of everywhere and bring up the drawbridge.

A further illustration comes from Poland. There, last autumn, two centre-right parties went into loose coalition to fight the election against the discredited and scandal-ridden socialists. One was, broadly, a progressive party — embracing the EU, free trade, migration and an extension of human rights. The other was more narrowly nationalistic and more Catholic. The second lot, however, won both the parliamentary and presidential elections and since then has formed a populist alliance with other small right-wing parties. The outcome has been fundamentally different.

All over Europe this redivision is complicated by the fact of an ageing, often comfortable population, which has a vested interest in resisting change and which tends to be neurotic about its own security. It worries excessively about crime, even when crime figures are falling; it doesn’t want anyone building new houses right next to Dunroamin; it is suspicious of all these strange accents and odd clothes. It wants higher walls, greener grass and no foreign entanglements.

Progressives, who exist in most parties, tend to believe that there are no walls that can keep the rest of the world out, and that it is counterproductive — immoral even — to try. We tend to believe in interdependence, and that what happens on the other side of the globe is our affair. We tend to believe in the open exchange of capital, ideas and people. We tend to believe — as India proves — that liberal democracy is not some kind of Western model that cannot be exported, but the best way of allowing human beings a say in their own government. We tend to believe in progress towards a fulfilling and equal existence for men and women, without arbitrary barriers. We tend to believe that scientific and technical progress can usually be harnessed for the benefit of humankind.

Of course, like all partisans I have painted my side of the argument in Pollyanna rose, and slapped black and blue all over the other side. And I have ignored the majority of people who will be sometimes one and sometimes the other. But the test of this argument is whether, in the round, you may be tempted to vote for someone of any of the main parties because of their orientation to these two main positions.

I could vote for David Cameron, but I couldn’t vote for David Davis or Ken Clarke. I could vote for Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, but I couldn’t vote for Frank Dobson or Clare Short. I could vote for Vincent Cable or David Laws, but I couldn’t vote for Jenny Tonge or Phil Willis. And I want to take up my position on the centre-left of the Progressive Party, just as some of my colleague writers on this paper should be happy to battle it out from their half-timbered vantage points within the Reactionary (or, if they prefer, Traditionalist) Party.

Read David Aaronovitch’s blog here

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