Anthony Painter identifies the real lessons the left and the labour movement should learn from Barack Obama’s capture of the White House

BRITAIN and America are different. We have a parliamentary system. Our main political parties are much stronger. This country’s social and ethnic mix is not the same as our partner in the “special relationship”. Our laws relating to campaign finance data protection and the like are different, so a Barack Obama-style battle for the White House could not take place in Britain. Also, the Democratic Party had the gale force wind of voter antipathy to George Bush at its back.

Such has been the complacent response to Obama’s election as President of the United States. Some of our politicians and columnists tend to sound like industrialists in the 1970s – dismissive of international exemplars on the basis that Britain is different.

Some Labour supporters think there are only some tactical and technological lessons to be learned from Obama’s success. But these could just as easily be learned by the Conservatives and it will not be sufficient merely to replicate Democratic campaign methods.

Imagine the horror when typewriter manufacturers learned of the invention of the personal computer. They were faced with a stark choice: either get into the computer market or build better typewriters.

There is a lesson for America’s automobile industry is in very grave trouble and who in this country manufactures cars now?

It seems that too many in and around the Labour Party are content to do the equivalent of trying to build new and improved rather than realise that a political sea-change has been unleashed across the Atlantic.

The most important lessons that Labour should take Obama’s victory campaign are the inspirational ones. If there is a way of articulating a British argument for genuine change, grounded in history, articulated forcefully without patronising or confusing voters, then labour movement politics can be revitalised and the battle of ideas won.

That is what Obama succeeded in doing in his country: he built and energised a movement for meaningful change. That’s why his campaign team was able to construct a formidable electoral machine. But it was not the machine which won. It was the ghost in the machine – the ideas and the inspiration.

Government and innovation don’t always mix. Public management doesn’t lend itself to searing rhetoric and the ministerial brief is hardly a form of poetry. Lazy words such as “progressive” are common in the political vernacular. But words such as “change” and “justice” – the language of the Obama – are harder-edged. As Robert F Kennedy once wrote: “Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies. The willingness to confront change will determine how much we really do for our youth.”

For a brief and vexing moment earlier this year, it looked as though the Tories might capture some of the language of the left without adopting its values or policies. That moment may have passed, as David Cameron and George Osborne revert to minimal state intervention Tory type.

Like Gordon Brown, they try to reach out to “hard-working families” – but these people are almost everyone and nearly no one. That mysterious demographic, “hard-working families”, simultaneously general and alienating, floats above the political consciousness without ever really connecting.

Labour now has an opportunity to define itself as radically different from the Tories in terms of the change it seeks and the justice it desires. After a brief touching of fingertips, a political gulf has once more opened up between the two parties. As long as Labour does not reach for the extremes in search of a demonstration of the distinction, that is no bad thing.

Most important is that Labour reconstructs a language of political inspiration which communicates its values in the clearest terms. It must reach into the history of the British struggle for justice to articulate a story of national destiny, just as Obama looked for inspiration to the likes of America’s founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

The President-elect is particularly fond of quoting Martin Luther King: “The arc of morality is long and it bends towards justice.” And British history, from the Levellers onwards, has been about popular movements wrenching the arc of morality towards justice. America’s story is an astonishing one, but ours is no less remarkable. What were the Chartists about? What were the formation of trade unions and the march toward workers’ rights about, if not justice?

The extension of suffrage to the working classes and then to women was aimed at creating a nation of equality. The labour movement was surely created to extend decency, eliminate poverty and strive for social justice. That’s why it fought against fascism and for the extension of the welfare state, common education and the creation of the National Health Service.

These may be works in progress, but how about the extension of civil rights from the 1960s onwards? Or the salvation of the NHS after 18 years of the Tories, the introduction of the national minimum wage and the investment since 1997 in a radical reduction of child and pensioner poverty?

What do all the achievements have in common? Mass uprisings of public participation helped to bring them about. The history of the fight for justice this country is one in which the labour movement has played rather more than a bit part. It is likely that only the left and centre in British politics will continue this fight.

Of course, this will need to be backed up by a popular and effective platform. But let there be no doubt what the political mission is. It is to bend that arc of morality towards justice. This is the big lesson from Obama’s victory. He is utterly comfortable talking in these terms – it is second nature to him. But he is also pragmatic. That is how he was able to seem simultaneously insurgent and reassuring.

All those working towards a fairer and better society in this country should see how, by sticking to the high road, incredible and historic things can be achieved.

It should be salutary reminder that Obama’s movement for change takes over from one that has dominated American politics for many years – the conservative movement of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. Britain endured almost two decades of Conservative rule with devastating consequences. It may seem the safer option to turn back from the search for justice rather than pursue it with the utmost vigour, but it would be an utterly disastrous manoeuvre. That is the big lesson Labour should never forget.

Anthony Painter is author of Barack Obama: the Movement for Change published by Blackamber Books. He blogs at www.anthonypainter.co.uk