Broadly Speaking

A month from now, the Republican Party's long march to homogeneity, or to coherence if that is what you prefer to call it, will have advanced by several more miles. In fact, given the nominations, that advance has already happened, regardless of whether or not those nominated are elected.

There is nothing coherent about trying to combine neoliberal economics, social conservatism and foreign policy hawkishness, but that is not the present point, which is this: since when were major American parties supposed to be homogeneous, supposed to be coherent in that sense? The thrashing out of differences within the very broad coalition that was either such party was always supposed to be as much a de facto constitutional check and balance as the role of each such party in checking and balancing the other.

There have always been, and there will and must always be, Republicans who could only conceivably be Republicans and Democrats who could only conceivably be Democrats. A certain partisan spirit is vital to maintaining accountability. But the probably obvious nominee of an effectively sectarian party stands no chance of winning the Presidency of the United States against the ultimately, even painfully, agreed nominee of a grand coalition. The Democrats have their own very real and present dangers here, but the Republican situation is far, far worse.

Take, for example, the House of Representatives. At their best, the Democratic leaders there must seek to accommodate and to reflect the Blue Dog Coalition, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, and the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, taking into account those who belong to more than one of these and those who belong to none. Within and under that, they must seek to accommodate and to reflect the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the huge number who do not and cannot belong to any of those three. Not necessarily an enviable task. But a nobler one than doing nothing more than give the Tea Party whatever it is that it wants while nursing those whom it has merely not yet succeeded in supplanting. Nobler, and in the long run infinitely more politic.

All that is missing from the Democratic Party at national level or with a national profile, such as Governors, or the Mayors of the largest cities, is any significant presence of economically left-wing social conservatives who oppose the war agenda and its attendant assaults on constitutional liberty; who see, for example, the connection between the exportation of jobs to sweatshops and the importation of those sweatshops themselves. Causes that are, as much as anything else, very dear indeed to the hearts of black America.

As for what the Tea Party wants, the obvious tension is between foreign policy hawkishness, with its vast opportunities for the lifelong employment of soi disant conservatives by the military-industrial complex (complete, in many cases, with lavish healthcare and other benefits in retirement at the general taxpayer's expense), and a definition of effectively all taxation and government spending as inherent immoral and oppressive. But there is also the fact that opposition to any action at federal level in the pro-life cause, or to uphold the traditional definition of marriage, places one in functionally the same position as the most socially liberal of all socially liberal Democrats.

For that as for a number of other related reasons, the most pro-life and pro-family voter in, say, Kentucky, can and should vote with an entirely clear conscience for the candidate in favour of the pro-life and pro-family government action necessary to save that state's coal industry, and against the anti-life and anti-family legalisation of cannabis, rather than for the candidate opposed to that action and in favour of that legalisation. (By the way, unlike his father, Rand Paul is also in favour of things like NAFTA, and has already had meetings with several of the most prominent neoconservative ideologues.)

And what of Britain? It is now as good as certain that the Coalition parties will stand down in each other's favour in certain seats at the 2015 Election, as the Conservatives and the Liberals have been known to do in the past since the War. If they play their cards right, then good news for UKIP and for the Liberal Party, both in any case potentially influential, even without necessarily winning seats, under the Alternative Vote. Traditional Tories and traditional Liberals have imperfect, but nevertheless existent, places to go, with their second and subsequent preference votes under any circumstance, and with their first preference votes if necessary.

But what about traditional Labourites? Not Hard or sectarian Leftists. There have always been parties for them. No, I mean the economically leftish, morally and socially conservative voters whose patriotism is precisely our opposition to global capitalism and to the waging of wars other than to defend our territory, citizens or interests. Unlike the Democratic Party, Labour is no longer willing or able to accommodate us along with economically rightish and socially liberal hawks, economically leftish and socially liberal hawks, and economically leftish and socially liberal doves.

The first are very welcome, the second are less so, and the third are even less so. But we are not welcome at all. If anyone tries to tell you that we are, then ask them to name the Shadow Cabinet candidates like us, or the first time MPs like us, or the candidates for safe or winnable seats like us.