Prospects for social democracy in Iraq

Brian Brivati, Professor of contemporary history at Kingston University, has an incisive and highly important article, Sneering will not help democracy, in today’s Guardian. He rightly takes the left to task: “There has been no greater abdication of leadership by the left since 1945 than its failure in the past decade to articulate how we should transform tyranny into freedom. The progressives should own this issue, but today it is President Bush's…” He concludes that “It is a double game in the next period. The first is to get as many people as possible to build on their first vote and buy further into a democratic oriented Iraq. The second is to use Iraq as a beacon of democracy in a region of tyranny, and for that we can only hope that the constitution is as liberal as possible. It is time for the left to take off the anti-American blinkers and see what voters across the Middle East want our help to build: freedom and democracy. If we don't engage, these new states will have no idea that social democracy was even an option.” I would only add that the role of the Iraqi labour movement is clearly central to this task.