Fascinating article by Labour rising star Douglas Alexander in today's Guardian. He writes that the lesson for the government from the Bush victory is

'how a party of power can not only solidify but strengthen its hold on the common sense of its times'.

Alexander has got the point the Tories have failed to grasp. Bush was surfing the zeitgeist. Kerry was in the diametrically opposite moral and cultural universe. Alexander notes:

'Since Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1964, the right in America has been building a uniquely powerful political movement. It has its own thinktanks, its own sources of money, its own grassroots. And, just as crucially, it has put in place a unifying ideology that brings together an otherwise diverse coalition - including evangelical Christians, gun owners, blue-collar workers and corporate business. The strength of this coalition was such that it was able to define the terms of political engagement on which the election was fought. Thus, from the start of the campaign, it seemed as if John Kerry was playing catch-up.'

Being a man of the left, however, Alexander can't bring himself to admit that the centre ground is social conservatism. He therefore has to pretend that the 'right' shifted that centre ground in the US. To win in Britain, therefore, the Labour party has to similarly shift the centre to its vision of the good society to produce a 'progressive consensus'. He unconcsciously exposes the flaw in his own argument by going on to claim that Labour's heart and that of the British political centre beat as one:

'Labour's internal polling shows we are today a nation whose character is progressive and socially democratic, with concerns that speak to fairness, duty, liberty and equality'.

Well, if Labour is where the British centre ground is, then why would the party need to shift it? The truth is that the government, and the world view of the moral relativist, truth-denying, post-modernist, nihilist left is far from the British centre ground inhabited by a mainstream that feels politically disenfranchised and abandoned. 'Fairness, duty and liberty' are currently dying on their feet, while 'equality' has been deformed into the monstrous victim culture.

And the same was true in the US. What happened was not that a bunch of right-wingers decided to shift the nation's moral compass. It had been shifted by the post-moral social wreckers of the left. The right then got its act together and organised a fight-back which, because it re-enfranchised the silent majority, has now retaken political power -- although the culture wars inthe US are far from over.

What all this means is that in Britain, where there has been no such cultural challenge to the hegemony of the left, it is now imperative that such a challenge is made through the formation of think-tanks, publications, websites or whatever. Alexander's article also suggests, however, that it will once again be Tony Blair who grasps the need to appeal to the socially conservative centre (however bogus that appeal may be), while the Tories continue to commit slow political suicide by not recognising the need for such an appeal at all.