Jag läser om Ingvar Carlsson, som just givit ut en memoarbok, och kommer att tänka på vad Hitchens en gång skrev om en viss form av social-democratic political style. Hans ämne var visserligen Harold Wilson, men hans poäng hade och har ändå en viss tyngd, syns det mig (ursäkta långt citat):

In our sad times, the image of the perfect phoney is very often an aspect of the social-democratic political style. A classic social democrat is one who must continue to please his constituents while labouring to reassure the powers that be. (‘There are two things to dislike about Harold Wilson,’ it used to be said. ‘His face.’) The resulting practice of theatrical – no, operatic – dissimulation was best caught by Isaac Deutscher in his study of the Scandinavian social democrat and all-purpose political conjuror and thug Trygve Lie. Yet there are honourable contrasts, such as Willy Brandt. In the whole of Brandt’s memoirs, the name Wilson is mentioned twice and then with a very pallid politeness. But when Wilson’s career began, it could still be said that British reformist socialism counted for something in the world.

The fact that this is no longer true is a fact that has yet to be definitely registered, either by its remaining adherents or by those who are the gatekeepers and umpires of ‘moderate’ and statesmanlike standards. Before Wilson, it is true that there was Ramsay MacDonald and all the rest of it. But before Wilson it was not so candidly admitted that the point of being in politics was to be in politics, nor that the point of being in power was to be in power. Not until the genial, vacuous, canny pipe-smoker came our way could it be said that Labour might lose an election and nobody with a tincture of radicalism or realism be other than stoic about the fact.

Det är väl inte utan att man kommer att tänka på – apropå “det teatrala hyckleriet” – Olof Palme som bagman åt Bofors Industrier medan han medlar mellan Irak och Iran (“…negotiating peace in the morning and selling arms in the afternoon”, som John Edwards formulerade det). Det är sant: det finns något i socialdemokratiskt DNA – och jag skyller som bekant på Axel Hägerström – som kallar pragmatiskt vad de flesta andra skulle kallat samvetslöst. Det förkroppsligas kanske främst, som Hitchens nämner, i Trygve Lies axelryckning när Trotskij skällt ut honom efter noter på norska justitieministeriet 1936.

Men Ingvar Carlsson verkar inte lagd åt det teatrala hållet. De recensioner jag läst lägger honom inte mycket mer till last än att ha brutit ett löfte till Anna Greta Leijon, och att ha låtit ett par grobianer som Hans Holmér och Ebbe Carlsson svinga i lianerna alltför länge. Mycket till Nachlass är det kanske inte, men värre har man sett.

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PS: Bengt O bad om en källa till det där med Trygve Lie och Trotskij. Citatet nedan är hämtat från Joseph Hansens recension (“Deutscher on Trotsky” 1964) av andra delen av Isaac Deutschers stora Troyskijbiografi, “The Prophet Outcast” (1963):

The second example [på Trotskij som sannspådd profet; min anm.] is Trotsky’s admonition of Trygve Lie, who later became head of the United Nations. The then Minister of Justice in the Norwegian government put Trotsky under house arrest, barred him from answering the charges in the infamous 1936 Moscow frame-up trial, and even cut him off from correspondence. Lie attempted to force Trotsky to sign a shameful agreement not to make any statements referring to the Moscow frame-up trial, in which Trotsky and his son were principal victims, and to submit the mail, telegrams and telephone calls of himself, his wife and secretaries to censorship. “Twenty years later eye-witnesses of the scene still remembered the flashes of scorn in Trotsky’s eyes and the thunder of his voice as he refused to comply.” He levelled a series of damaging questions at Trygve Lie.

“At this point Trotsky raised his voice so that it resounded through the halls and corridors of the Ministry: ‘This is your first act of surrender to Nazism in your own country. You will pay for this. You think yourselves secure and free to deal with a political exile as you please. But the day is near – remember this! – the day is near when the Nazis will drive you from your country, all of you together with your Pantoffel-Minister-President.’ Trygve Lie shrugged at this odd piece of soothsaying. Yet after less than four years the same government had indeed to flee from Norway before the Nazi invasion; and as the Ministers and their aged King Haakon stood on the coast, huddled together and waiting anxiously for a boat that was to take them to England, they recalled with awe Trotsky’s words as a prophet’s curse come true.”

Märk väl att Trotskij varnar Lie för den tyska nazismen, inte Stalin och Röda Armén. Trotskij var ju bland de första (redan 1923) att inse faran med “den tyska fascismen”.