Obamamania?

As a politics junkie, I find the US presidential race exciting - certainly better than Gordon Brown's ignominious coronation - but not particularly inspiring. I'm not wild about any of the candidates.

I find Hillary Clinton uninspiring: a robotic, machine candidate, with a nasty streak and an offputting sense of entitlement. That's a pity. Her policies are a mixed bag; I preferred Bill's.

I think Obama is a great speaker, but I'm not hugely enthusiastic about him either.

Being for "the future" "change" and "hope" is all very well, but tell me which candidate is in favour of "the past" "more of the same" and "despair".

There is something worryingly content-free about his message. Apart from his symbolic opposition to the Iraq war (which is more a consistency issue than a policy difference, since Clinton's current position on the war is not very different to his), there is not much to separate him from Hillary on policy. Instead, he is basically selling himself as him: "Vote for me because I represent change, I represent unity", rather than "Vote for me because this is how I want America to change, this is how I will somehow unite a deeply polarised country."

"Yes, we can" is a great slogan, but how exactly does Obama plan to heal the deep divide over immigration, for instance?

Of course, having a non-white president whose father was a Kenyan immigrant would be hugely symbolic, a credit to American society, and a powerful example of the benefits of immigration. But the most powerful person on earth is more than a symbol - and I would like to have a better idea of Obama's world view before he is granted such power. Symbolic figures are not necessarily good decision-makers.

I also find Obamamania disconcerting precisely because it is a mania: half-way between a Britney Spears concert and the Nuremberg rally. (In case anyone tries to draw silly conclusions, of course I am not comparing Obama to Hitler.)

On a separate point, the media cycle is becoming somewhat predictable: first Hillary is miles ahead, then Obama is catching up quickly, then Obama is going to beat Clinton convincingly. When the results come in, the reality that Obama's score-draw is a huge achievement given Clinton's entrenched advantages is reinterpreted as disappointment compared to the hype immediately before Super Tuesday itself.

If you discount the fact that expectations overshoot because of herd behaviour, Obama did remarkably well in neutralising what was designed to be Clinton's sweeping victory.

A Pyrrhic 'victory' for France's Socialists

It is a measure of how low expectations have sunk that France's Socialist Party (PS) is celebrating after winning scarcely more than a third of the seats in the country's newly elected National Assembly. Pollsters had been forecasting electoral oblivion; instead, the PS merely received a drubbing at the hands of President Sarkozy's victorious UMP.

In the near term, Sunday's results are good for democracy: every government needs a strong opposition to hold it to account and curb its excesses. When opposition in parliament is puny, critics are more likely to take to the streets instead.

Paradoxically, though, the Socialists' relative success may harm their longer-term electoral prospects. Had the PS done disastrously badly, the pressure for reforming the party would have been overwhelming. It would have been easier for it to follow in the footsteps of its counterparts in Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain and become a modern - and thus electable - social-democratic party, along the lines suggested by Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

There is still hope. But Sunday's results risk fostering the delusion that an unreformed PS can win in 2012 and thus help the party's dinosaurs to stifle much-needed change.

A Socialist ought to have been a shoo-in for the presidency this year. With President Chirac discredited after 12 years in office and the outgoing UMP government deeply unpopular, French voters were aching for a change. Yet it was Nicolas Sarkozy, a long-time minister in that administration, who seized the mantle of change, while Ségolène Royal stumblingly embodied the status quo.

The Socialists have not won a legislative election since 1997, a presidential one since 1988. The Left's combined share of the vote in the first round of this year's legislative election was its lowest since the Fifth Republic began in 1958.

It would be a big mistake to intepret the second-round bounce as a Socialist revival. More likely, it reflects voters' second thoughts about granting the UMP a crushing majority, combined with fears about the new government's ill-timed and poorly explained proposal to hike VAT.

If the Socialists are to stand a chance of winning power again, they must embrace reform. The long-term health of French democracy depends on it. After the marginalisation of François Bayrou's centrist Modem party, only a modernised Socialist Party can pose a viable alternative to the UMP.

Voters want a say

The British people want a say when the Labour Party changes its leader, and thus appoints the next prime minister. According to the Observer,

A new opinion poll reveals 56 per cent of the public want the chance to have their say on the new leader of the Labour party, whoever it is, within the first six months. Voters are not content to leave the question of the next Prime Minister to the party and want him or her to earn the right to govern. The GFK/NOP poll found huge support for a genuine leadership battle rather than a coronation, with 81 per cent supporting a contest.

This is exactly the point I made in an earlier post. A snap general election is not a constitutional requirement, but it is the right thing to do — and voters want one. The next prime minister ignores them at his peril.

The prince's putsch

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't Britain meant to be a democracy? And doesn't that mean that it ought to be up to voters who runs the country, and that nobody has an inherent right to rule? Not according to Gordon Brown. The Chancellor, we are told, has been waiting to be prime minister all his life; he was promised the top job by Tony Blair back in 1994; and it is high time the prince received his inheritance.

Yet many people yearn to be prime minister - some desperately so - without this giving them any rights to occupy Number 10. Nor, for all his quasi-regal pretensions, is the prime ministership in Tony Blair's gift: he is not the king of Saudi Arabia who must choose his successor among his brothers and sons. And Gordon Brown is not Prince Charles: a man to whom the crown is due, eventually.

Such is Brown's arrogant belief that he has a right to rule that he demands not only that a prime minister elected to serve a full term depart on a timetable set by him, but that Blair anoint him his successor, and close down the opportunity for even the Labour Party - let alone the voters at large - to have their say.

In the short term, he may well succeed. But there is something contemptuously undemocratic about Brown's slow putsch. If it is a foretaste of how he intends to govern, his reign is likely to prove short.

Brown may believe that he is owed the top job, but after this week's unseemly events the voters - when they are eventually consulted - are increasingly likely to decide otherwise.

The voters, not the Labour Party, should choose Blair's heir

Apart from the political commentariat, I think most people are sick and tired of the latest twists in the Blair vs Brown saga. The incessant feuding mainly serves to reinforce disillusion with politicians: however much they say that what really matters to them is improving our schools and hospitals or safeguarding our pensions, they appear to care most about their own prospects. So reform of the House of Lords or changes to the way political parties are funded are scarcely going to change the perception that politicians are only in it for themselves

There is also something distinctly offputting - even undemocratic - about the claims from the Chancellor's camp that the premiership is his by right. It was less than a year ago that we the voters were asked to choose a government, and the winner was the Labour Party run by Tony Blair. For sure, I am aware that in the British political system, we vote for parties not prime ministers (or presidents), but the prospectus we were sold was that Blair would serve a full third term. Yet now we are increasingly told that Blair ought to give way to Brown much sooner.

Perhaps Blair's time is indeed up. But if so, I think a new prime minister, Brown or otherwise, should be required to seek a fresh democratic mandate. After all, Brown may feel he is the heir apparent, but he is not the democratically anointed heir, in the way that a US vice-president is. This is not an argument against Brown specifically: I felt just as disturbed when the Tory party thrust on the country an unproven and uninspiring new leader called John Major.

Constitutional reform is suddenly at the top of the agenda again. Good. Among the many proposed changes, consideration should be given to correcting the undemocratic abuse of power that potentially allows a cabal of members from one party to choose a leader of the country without seeking voters' approval.