New Deal Old Deal

The party conference season is coming to its end and as the media wend their weary way back to the boozers of Bayswater and adjacent areas of London it is unlikely that there will be much in the way of considered reflection or analysis of what it all means.

At one time they were jollies at seaside towns glad of a bit of post season passing trade. Now they are imprisoned in urban conference centres, Brighton having become an outer suburb of London.

The other aspect is that the parties are singing to the same hymn sheet, prepared by shoals of advisers and experts to appeal to this marginal voter and that and the latest celebrity obsessions and the rest. One thing though resonates from the past, the concept of a "New Deal".

The notion is nothing new. Modern historians link it to the 1932 Presidential campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the USA Democrat Party to distance himself from the Republican Party's misfortune to be in power during the Wall Street Crash and its catastrophic effects.

Before Roosevelt there was Benito Mussolini of Italy, not long unified. Because of wartime propaganda and being overtaken by Hitler he has become a secondary, almost a joke, figure. But in his first years he was not. After the March of Rome of 1912 he ruled Italy on a New Deal basis and had become an example to ambitious political leaders. His programme of public spending and works seems very familiar.

It does not begin there. He was drawing on the time of the new Germany and Prince Otto Von Bismarck, he in turn had Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon of the 1850's and 1860's of France with his vast rebuilding of Paris and attempts to spend France into the modern world.

From there it is possible to go further with a choice of rulers both within and beyond Europe who in their time went in for the big build and major revisions of economic policy and the rest. Just one will serve as an example, Tsar Peter The Great and First of Russia. If you want a New Deal he is hard to beat.

I would like to attempt the track back to the Rome of The Caesars, and especially Julius with his vision of a united Europe and a mighty Rome. For our three major party leaders each has an alternative. May has Boris Johnson, Corbyn has John McDonnell and Cable has Jo Swinson.

Et tu Brute?