SUGGESTATION

I’m trying very hard to refrain from writing a few lines about everything Justin twitters - very difficult though, he’s a cornucopia of interesting links.

This time I couldn’t resist. Daniel Davies has a CiF article up proclaiming the death of the Euston Manifesto.

The Euston Manifesto had a big impact on me when I first encountered it. I’d stumbled from blog to blog reading diverse opinions on the Iraq war, interventionism, and foreign policy in general - the EM was supposed to be a consolidation of ‘decent’ opinion - neither neocons nor islamists. Ho ho. I left a few comments around the blogosphere trying to get a handle on what this manifesto meant, but only slowly came to the dawning realisation that this group had a wildly different political outlook to my own.

The biggest impact (revelations of Jherad,2:1) to me was in highlighting the very real divides in lefty politics. I’ve learned to be a little more cautious these days - I’m almost afraid of commenting on something good a journalist writes in case they turn out to be a raving loon.

These days, the word ‘decent‘ carries a nasty connotation for non-Eustonites in the know. Lines were drawn in the sand, but it isn’t just them and us - plenty of other lefties get my back up. I’m glad the Euston Manifesto is dead or dying - though there are big divides in the right wing of politics, they always seem (at least to me) to pull together when it comes to elections. The EM was a very visible sign of the rift on the left.