Can a leader be gay?

Simon Hughes's real mistake was in covering up the fact that he was gay. Britain might just be ready to accept a homosexual leader

Published in later editions of the Evening Standard 26 January 2006

And then there was one. The top echelon of the Liberal Democrats could be forgiven for feeling like the cast of an Agatha Christie play. First it was Charles Kennedy to be summoned to the drawing room, to announce he had concealed a drink problem – and then handed the metaphorical revolver by his senior colleagues. Then it was Mark Oaten, confronted by a nasty secret from his past involving a relationship with a male prostitute. Now trouble has found Simon Hughes, forced to admit this morning, despite earlier denials, that he has had homosexual relationships. The question any audience for this drama would now be asking is: what secrets is Ming Campbell hiding?

The answer is probably none, which means recent events are vindicating somewhat his campaign message: that he is the candidate of solid, predictable safety. When his aides devised that strategy they can’t have known how apt it was to become.

What Campbell’s rivals for the Lib Dem leadership failed to realise –
Hughes as much as Oaten and Kennedy – is one of the iron laws of political scandal: it’s never the “crime”, it’s always the cover-up.

The definitive, textbook example is the mother of all scandals: Watergate. Most students of American politics agree that what was famously dubbed “a third-rate burglary” would not, on its own, have toppled Richard Nixon. But the fact that the president lied and lied again – staring into the camera to tell the American people “I am not a crook” – sealed his fate. His eventual successor, Bill Clinton, learned the same lesson. If he had told his legal interrogators that, yes, he had indeed had a dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, it would have been mightily embarrassing – but there would have been no grounds for his impeachment.

Less dramatically, our own politicians have seen the same iron logic
operate. Whether its David Blunkett and his business interests or Peter Mandelson and a home loan, it’s almost always the initial failure to disclose the truth, not the deed itself, that does the damage.

Admittedly, it might not have looked that way to either Kennedy or Oaten. If the former leader had indeed come clean about his drinking, confessing in, say, last year’s interview with Jeremy Paxman, that he was an alcoholic – rather than adamantly denying it — that fact alone might still have forced his resignation. But it would have made his critics’ job harder, denying them the easy option of saying, as the hunters always say when chasing their scandal-plagued quarry, that ‘the issue is honesty.’

It’s similarly likely that Oaten’s career would have been terminated by admitting he used a male prostitute, even if he had made the admission long ago and unprompted. As it was, he laid himself open to the perennial charge of deceit and hypocrisy (not least because he had posed for cameras with his wife and two children a matter of days earlier).

None of this needed to apply to Simon Hughes. He is not married; he has lived no lie. The closest he gets to a hypocrisy charge is his connivance back in 1983 in the vicious Bermondsey by-election battle, when his Labour opponent, Peter Tatchell, was repeatedly pilloried as a “queer.” But Hughes has since admitted his discomfort over that episode – and Tatchell has forgiven him, even backing his bid for the Lib Dem leadership.

So, if Hughes had spoken truthfully about his sexuality a long time ago, no one would have hounded him from his post. Alcoholism in a leader is probably unacceptable to most voters; the use of a prostitute almost certainly is. But a homosexual or bisexual orientation might not be.

I say “might” because the truth is we still don’t know. On this issue, we have never been tested: we have still not had an openly gay politician seek high office. The closest we got was Michael Portillo, who, pre-empting the iron law of scandal – that the cover-up is greater than any supposed “crime” – made an honest, unforced disclosure, of his own homosexual experiences. He was never presented as a potential prime minister to the voters however, because Tory MPs thwarted his leadership bid. So we will never know if the British people would have had a problem with his sexuality or not.

It’s a tricky question, this, because the signals we collectively send, in London and beyond, are mixed. On the one hand, we know that violently homophobic attacks are on the increase: witness the brutal murder of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common last autumn. We also know
that “gay” has become the term of abuse of choice in many playgrounds, suggesting that prejudice is alive in the next generation.

And yet, at the same time, many lesbians and gay men recognise that they are closer to equality now than at any time in their history. Whether it's civil partnerships or a change in the age of consent, the law grants a respect to gay relationships that was once entirely absent. In official, public discourse homophobia is fast becoming as unacceptable as overt racism – to the point where the
police, once a byword for bigotry, now interview the likes of the
self-styled family values campaigner Lynette Burrows or the Muslim Council of Britain leader Sir Iqbal Sacranie over anti-gay remarks each of them made on the radio.

This is how London, indeed Britain, looks today – homophobia far from
eradicated at street level, but deemed unacceptable in polite, established society. Hughes clearly judged that, for all the advances in this new, gay-friendly Brokeback Mountain Britain, it was still too risky for him to tell the whole truth about himself. It is a great sadness that he sought out the anonymity of the Man Talk chat line, rather than openly forming a relationship. Perhaps he thought Britain was not ready for a gay leader. Now it’s up to the Lib Dems to give Britain a chance to test itself – and find out.

The other 2012 race

Time is running out for London's plans to stage a major cultural festival for the Olympics - but we can learn from Germany's World Cup effort

Published in early editions of the Evening Standard 26 January 2006

Probably the last people we want to take lessons from are the Germans, least of all when it comes to football. Along with Argentina, Germany has been our nemesis – bringing cruel defeat, usually on penalties, time after time.

Still, we may have to park that prejudice for a few weeks this summer when our old rival hosts the World Cup. As 2012 approaches, one group of Londoners should be watching the tournament especially closely – to pick up some useful tips.

Of course, Sebastian Coe and his Olympic staff will want to see how well the Germans stage a massive sporting event. But they should pay close attention to another aspect of Germany ’06 – and for that they don’t have to wait till the summer.

For what both the World Cup and the Olympics have in common these days is an obligation to reach out to those with no interest in sport. Major international competitions like these must now come with a cultural festival attached.

That means Coe’s job is to ensure not only that the 110m hurdles and men’s solo canoeing go to plan in 2012, but that there’s also plenty of live music, theatre and dance. And it’s not just a fortnight of arts events that’s required. The rules say that the moment Beijing passes on the Olympic torch in 2008, the London cultural festivities must begin.

That’s just two years away — and yet preparations have barely started. The post of Culture, Ceremonies and Education Director is still vacant, though the London team are hoping to make an appointment “in the next four weeks or so.” Theatre director Jude Kelly headed up the culture wing of the London bid, but her time is now consumed with running the South Bank. Some of London’s biggest arts figures – the likes of Tony Hall of the Royal Opera House and Nick Hytner of the National Theatre – were on a bid committee, but that body has had only one, poorly-attended meeting since London won the games in July. It now needs to be re-constituted for a new and much harder task: not proposing a cultural festival, but staging one. The plan is to have the relevant structures in place by April. For now, there is a yawning gap.

And yawning could be the operative word. The slim section in the bid document that related to culture was either vague or uninspiring. It promised a “festival of world culture,” which one insider admits is “just a name at the moment, with no content”; a Shakespeare festival, which sounds all right; and an idea to send a boat round the world to be called The Friend Ship.

Now I don’t want to be cynical, but that last wheeze has got dud written all over it. For one thing, it’s a lame pun that works only in English. For another, it defeats one of the purposes of the “cultural games,” which is to engage and excite the people of the host country in the lead up to the big event. The Friend Ship will, obviously, spend most of its time at sea, far away from London. Think the idea through and it only gets worse. The ship is meant to travel the world, picking up cultural cargo to bring back to London. If that doesn’t confirm the very imperialist image of our city which 2012 is desperate to cast off, then perhaps the specific voyage planned for Beijing will. Organisers imagine sending an 18th century style tea-clipper to China – a sure way to awaken memories of a dark episode in British imperial history, a trade dispute over tea which eventually led to the opium wars.

In other words, there is a right way to do these things and a wrong way. Which brings us to Germany. I’ve spent this week travelling across the country, and I’ve been struck by the quality of cultural activity already underway to mark the World Cup. The London organisers should hop on a plane fast – and steal as many good ideas as they can get away with.

The centrepiece is, naturally, a football – a huge, stunning orb, done in steel and neon that resembles both a ball and a globe. It’s been touring Germany’s cities since 2003 – fully three years before the tournament – bringing out long queues of punters wherever it appears. Inside are a series of hi-tech delights, screens which let you referee a virtual reality match, assemble different classic national teams, even to play the physio, massaging an injured player. So far there have been 700,000 visitors.

Come the evening and all the electronic gear is removed, transforming the orb into a 120-seat auditorium. It’s been the venue for the Cologne Opera Ensemble doing a high-art performance of terrace chants, a poet reading sonnets on the beautiful game and a celebrated choreographer, dressed in football strip, demonstrating the physical similarities between soccer and ballet. From Stuttgart to Leipzig, it’s been a huge success.

Beyond the travelling ball, there are 48 separate projects, including an oratorio – part choral music, part football chant – as well as a festival of short films with a soccer theme, drawing in moviemakers from Sri Lanka to Argentina. Coming in June is a theatrical improv competition, pitting national teams against each other: think of ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ as an Olympic sport.

There are lessons here for London. First, the cultural stuff should be thematically connected with the main event: in Germany the artistic output has not been random, but linked to football. For 2012 that needn’t mean operas about javelin throwing, but rather a connection with the deeper theme of the games: the diversity that makes London truly the world in one city. Second, you need a creative genius at the helm. Germany has deployed the phenomenal Austrian artist Andre [note to subs: acute accent on the e – JF] Heller: London could do worse than to give him a call. And third, this is a sport where speed counts. London needs to get cracking right away.

We want to step out of the Shoah shadow, but we run into obstacles

As the Holocaust goes from memory to history, Jews have tried to move forward. But the deniers haul us back again

Read the full article on the Guardian website

'The Clinton years that never were'

A lament for the end of an era as The West Wing is cancelled. Read the full article on the Guardian website

Betrayal of the East End

Anger at ministers' backtracking on plans to redevelop Bart's and the Royal London hospitals springs from a long-standing sense of grievance

Published in the Evening Standard 19 January 2006

It reads like a cry of rage. The fury sparks off the page as you read Alastair Wilson's open letter to the prime minister, published in the Evening Standard last night. Wilson is the consultant in charge of accident and emergency at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, honoured for his role treating the victims of 7/7. But yesterday he wrote to Tony Blair not in the cool, calm language of a top clinician, but in the voice of a man pushed beyond his limits.

“Why oh why do Government have to kick the downtrodden?” he fumes. “What did the East End do to you that they should deserve such injustice?”

The source of his anger is the government's decision to “review” a £1.1bn plan to redevelop the twinned Bart's and Royal London Hospitals. Wilson and his team had been looking forward to working in a new, state-of-the-art medical centre, one the East End has been crying out for for decades. Just two days before Christmas they heard the plan might not go ahead after all.

No wonder they're angry. Staff feel they proved their worth a hundred times over in the aftermath of the bombings, when they helicoptered in medical teams to deal with the injured. As Wilson writes, in the era of a war on terror, and with the Olympics of 2012 looming, this is an asset London cannot afford to discard.

They fear the government's cost-cutting plan – stripping Barts's of its cardiac and cancer services – will fatally weaken the Royal London, including its medical school. And, they say, it's not as if the government didn't have fair warning of this mess. The flaws in the Private Financial Initiative – running up colossal debts to the private companies who build new hospitals - were all pointed out by critics years ago. If the government only woke up to this folly now, that's not Bart's' fault.

But this only explains part of Wilson's fury. For what makes his letter so powerful is that he is drawing on a well of East End anger that goes very, very deep.

In the second world war, it was the East End which took the brunt of the Nazi punishment, as German bombs blitzed the area night after night. We're used to seeing the archive footage of the rubble and smashed buildings; we forget that at least 40,000 people died that way (my own grandmother among them).

That, of course, remains part of the folk memory of the East End. But so do the promises made as the bombs fell. Politicians came, one after another, to tell the people emerging from the underground stations and air raid shelters that their streets and neighbourhoods would be rebuilt – that a new Jerusalem would arise on the smashed ruins of Stepney, Bethnal Green and Whitechapel.

It didn't happen. Instead people were moved out, rehoused in the new towns of Essex, in Gants Hill, Redbridge or Loughton. Most of those who moved were glad of the change – now they had an indoor bathroom and a garden - but those left behind felt betrayed. The new buildings they were promised came in the form of estates, often consisting of ugly tower blocks. This is the nerve the health secretary Patricia Hewitt is striking when she tells East Enders the new hospitals they were promised are back under review: they feel they are being betrayed all over again.

And this sentiment predates the war. “The East End has been at the wrong end of the City for a thousand years,” says Geoff Dench, co-author with Kate Gavron of The New East End, which is published next month and which revisits the landmark 1957 study of the area made by the great social entrepreneur and East End champion Michael Young. Dench argues that the City of London used the East End as a dumping ground for anything, and anyone, it didn't want – and that pattern has endured into the 21st century.

It began when the foul-smelling leather and tanning trades were shifted east in the 13th century, followed by clothes, furniture and, 400 years later, the docks. As London industrialised, all the noxious bone-boiling plants, all the heavy industry, was dumped there. “Control over trading was in the City,” says Dench. “The actual dirty work was in the East End.” Even now, the East End is criss-crossed by pylons, while waste disposal facilities line the Thames. London is like Glasgow or Paris, a place where the prevailing wind blows the foul smells eastward – sending those with money to live on the hills or out west, while the poor live in the east. Tellingly, the views of St Paul's Cathedral which are fiercely protected by London's heritage custodians are from the west, from Primrose Hill or Richmond; views from the east, from Harold Hill, Romford or Greenwich, don't count.

Eastenders retain the feeling that they are the backyard, into which is thrown whatever the rest of London does not want – and that includes people. Wave after wave of immigrants have been herded into the crowded streets of the East End – some of my own family made their start in the Rothschild Buildings on Flower and Dean Street – since that was the one place that would have them. Huguenots, Jews, Indians and Bengalis, they have all started in the East End.

The result is intense social need. Whatever measure you use, the East End is one of the most deprived areas in Britain, if not Europe. Medical students at the Royal London marvel at the range of diseases they confront, from diabetes to tuberculosis – the ailments of poverty.

This is why Wilson told Blair “The wound lies open” and that it will be no “remedy to sever the poorest limb of London.” If any area deserves all the money it takes, and for at least one solemn promise to be kept, it is the East End.

How police gay rights zealotry is threatening our freedom of speech

When lawmakers decide what we can and can't say, good intentions quickly tip over into something sinister

Read the full article on the Guardian website

We were wrong about Sharon

His past is appalling and we may loathe his motives, but he did things that Palestinians and peaceniks have been demanding for years. And he would have gone on doing them.

Read this cover story from the New Statesman on their website

Blood breeds blood

A storm is brewing over Spielberg's latest film, Munich - his most political yet. The director's position in the Jewish world may never be the same again, says Jonathan Freedland

Read the full article on the Guardian website

A statue we don't need

As a monument to Nelson Mandela falls by the wayside, why is a memorial to the Queen Mother going through on the nod?

Published in the Evening Standard 12 January 2006

Here's a quick quiz question. Which is the greater, more historic achievement: ending apartheid in South Africa or eight decades spent waving a hand and giving a twinkly smile? Put it another way. Who is the better role model for our children: a man who endured 27 years behind bars, fighting for his people's freedom - or a woman who lived for a century in cosseted comfort, quartered in her dotage in four palatial homes and served by a retinue of 50? Who, in other words, deserves a statue in London: Nelson Mandela or the Queen Mother?

But don't reach for your phones just yet. This is not Celebrity Big Brother: you can't vote on this one. No, this decision has already been taken – and you and I had next to no say in the matter.

The proposal, championed by the Mayor, for a sculpture of Nelson Mandela to stand on the north terrace of Trafalgar Square was finally rejected last month by John Prescott, who has the last word on all planning matters. Even though he had publicly backed the Mandela idea – heartily applauding Ken Livingstone as he argued for it in a speech at last autumn's Labour party conference – three months later the Deputy Prime Minister rejected it on that spot.

He sided instead with Westminster Council, accepting the view that a statue of the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle would be “harmful to the character and appearance” of the Square if sited there. It was more important to maintain the symmetry of the Square, apparently – which is a bit of a puzzle when you reflect that Trafalgar Square has been famously asymmetrical for more than 150 years, with two statues on one side, and only one on the other (thanks to a fourth plinth which sat empty for a century and a half.)

So no permanent tribute to the most revered human being alive, a champion of justice whose moral authority is respected in every corner of the globe. But the former Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who is said to have run up eight-figure overdrafts of taxpayers' money on racehorses, who lived in a Gosford Park fantasy world of country houses, shooting parties and footmen – she is about to be memorialised in London statuary and you will hear barely a word against it.

While the Mandela project dragged its way through endless committees, hearings and appeals, the monument to the Queen Mother will proceed at warp speed. “Expressions of interest” from those hoping to design a fitting memorial were sought on Monday; and they were given a deadline of just three weeks. The top designers will be shortlisted by the end of February; they have to submit their plans by June, with a winner chosen in August, ready to be unveiled by next year. By the usual marathon standards of such projects, this is a steroid-fuelled sprint.

You might envisage multiple obstacles in the way. After all, royal memorials have proved a tricky business recently – as anyone who has visited the Diana Memorial Mudslide in Hyde Park can testify. The new Queen Mother project seeks to head off a repeat of that trouble with this discreet warning to any would-be artists: “Ease of ongoing maintenance by The Royal Parks is a key issue, so the use of water and moving parts is to be discouraged.”

The royal family will get no nasty surprises because, handily, it is keeping this decision all to itself. Take a look at the selection committee charged with picking a winning design. Its chaired by Prince Charles, with the following members: the Keeper of the Privy Purse, Alan Reid; the Director of the Royal Collection, Sir Hugh Roberts; the Private Secretary to The Prince of Wales, Sir Michael Peat; and the Director of the Property Section of the Royal Household, Graham Sharpe.

Now, such a cosy arrangement – four white male servants of the Windsors – would be entirely acceptable if this group were merely picking out a new rug for one of Buckingham Palace's private apartments. But they are, in fact, making a decision that will affect the public space we all share: the memorial is likely to be on The Mall, near the statue of the Queen Mother's husband, George VI.

All Londoners will have to live with the choice the Prince and his courtiers make. Yet the nearest this closed circle will get to democracy is when they submit their favoured scheme to Westminster Council in June. Now, I'm not much of a betting man, but I'd stake a fair sum that Westminster will accept the royal decision without too much protest. While they gave Ken daily grief over the Mandela plan, expect them to bend the knee, tug the forelock and bow graciously to the will of the Windsors when it comes to Her Majesty, the last Empress of India.

None of this makes for a heartening start to 2006. The obvious point is that London, already stuffed to the gills with dead royals etched in marble, stone and bronze hardly needs another one. What are lacking are monuments to people of colour: there is a statue of Gandhi in Bloomsbury, Martin Luther King can be found somewhere in Westminster Abbey and Mandela is already on the South Bank. Otherwise, the most visible black face in this city is the anonymous black person in the frieze at the bottom of Nelson's Column. Our statuary and sculpture doesn't begin to reflect the diverse city we have become.

But that is only half of the problem. The very way this process works is lamentable. How can it be that, in the London of 2006, it is still possible for an unelected Prince to wave his regal hand and alter our shared landscape, with barely a nod to the rest of us? When we raise that statue to the Queen Mother, as the Mandela one remains unbuilt, we will be saying something profound and depressing about ourselves: that we still elevate heredity and aristocracy over democracy, that we revere monarchy more than freedom.

The next phase of Sharonism might have defeated Sharon himself

The new prime minister must perform a deed that proved too hard for greater men - pullout from the West Bank

Read the full article on the Guardian website

Israel braced for loss of its grandfather

Read the front page report from Jerusalem, as Israel comes to terms with Ariel Sharon's massive stroke, on the Guardian website

Give the Met real muscle

The Government proposes to merge police forces in all but the one place it would make sense - London. But the post-7/7 city needs joined-up policing

Published in the Evening Standard 5 January 2006

Tony Blair is a man in a hurry. Ever since he announced that this would be his last term as prime minister, he has acted as if there is not a second to lose. Policies that would normally be introduced and debated gradually are now rammed through at breakneck speed, whether it be his post-7/7 plan to fight terrorism – floated in August and partially defeated by November– or an education overhaul that has gone from vague proposal to parliamentary bill in a matter of weeks. He may even want to squeeze in a quick war before he goes, so don't go booking any holidays in Tehran.

Nothing typifies this Supermarket Sweep approach to governance – shoving as much in the political trolley as he can before his time runs out – as the PM's proposed shake-up of Britain's police forces. In November the country's 43 forces were put on notice that they were to be cut down to as few as 12: there would be just six weeks for consultation and no Commons debate.

This, like so many decisions taken in a hurry, is a bad idea. The new regional forces will cover vast, sprawling areas with no meaningful identity. They will be anonymous, composite bodies far removed from the people they're meant to serve. If you live in Shrewsbury or Hereford you could well find your “local” policeman gets his instructions from Birmingham. Notice a break-in in Chatham, and you could be phoning the details to a desk sergeant in Brighton.

It's not like we don't know why this is a mistake. We already have experience of these mega-forces, thanks to the last Conservative government whose own round of mergers cut the number of constabularies by two thirds. In 2003 the right-leaning Policy Exchange think tank analysed government statistics and found “no evidence that larger, amalgamated forces are generally more effective or offer better value for money.”

What they discovered instead was something our own instincts could have told them: that when it comes to policing, the more local the better. Fighting crime means knowing the backstreets of an area, its shops and pubs, its quirky rhythms and customs and, above all, its people. That can't be done from a head office 200 miles away. Dixon may not live in Dock Green any more – but he shouldn't be based a motorway drive away either. As Policy Exchange concluded: “Smaller forces with a strong commitment to visible policing are among the most successful at cutting crime and providing public reassurance.”

The United States understood that long ago. There is no Texas police force, no California constabulary. Instead each city – even each small town – has its own police department, its funds raised locally, its chief appointed directly by the local mayor. (I remember my own surprise, as a correspondent in the US in the 1990s, at seeing squad cars pulling up bearing the municipal insignia of Enid, Oklahoma or, my own favourite, Normal, Illinois.) The FBI fights crimes that are national in nature, but otherwise it's down to the most local level possible: a distinct police department for every distinct community. The results are plain to see, the best known being New York's phenomenal turnaround under former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who saw crime fall by 61 per cent in less than ten years.

Blair's approach is in the opposite direction, taking us closer to the French model under which most policing falls under two centrally-run forces. When smaller, more local forces pop up, the centre immediately seeks to assert control – just as Britain's Home Office constantly bombards chief constables with Whitehall-devised targets and nationally-dictated strategies. The top-down, French model hasn't worked in France, where violent crime is still rising – and there's no reason why it should work here.

There is, however, one exception, one place where a possible merger of forces could make sense – and it is London. Right now, the Met polices most of the capital, of course, but there are two gaping holes in its authority. The dimensions of the first gap are exactly one square mile. For the City of London retains its very own police force, even its own uniform. As a localist, I like the eccentricity of that anomaly – but it can hardly be defended. It's as if the NYPD covered all New York, except for Wall Street. With London the key British target for potential terrorists, it makes no sense – and causes some operational hassles – to have a central area under separate jurisdiction. I'm told the Met still scratches its head at the City police's decision in the minutes after the 7/7 bombings to order all mobile phone service in the area switched off. The phone companies obeyed and the lines duly went down. If that step had been taken across London, it would have risked mass panic – as anxious people tried and failed to contact each other.

The City says it's coped well with terrorism before: witness the effective ring of steel it installed after the IRA bombs of 1992. Such steps could still be taken under a single Met, but they would be part of a coherent strategy for the whole capital. The same goes for the other gap in the Met's current turf. As things stand, protection of the Underground and commuter trains falls under the British Transport Police. Complain about, say, a ticket tout who operates in and out of Wembley Park tube station and you'll have two police forces shrugging their shoulders and pointing at each other, both saying “It's their job, not ours.”

All this cries out for integration, making the Met a single, London-wide force, including both trains and the Square Mile. Yet, insanely, the current government proposal is for the City to keep its own separate force – even as the likes of Kent, Surrey and Sussex lose theirs. It makes no sense at all. But that's what comes of governing in a hurry.

What if they are all wrong - and Bush turns out to be one of the great American presidents?

Published in What If They Are All Wrong? - the Montrose Journal, Winter 2005-6

For a left liberal like me, it is not easy to commit heresy. After all, we are meant to be open-minded free thinkers, unshackled by taboos. Nevertheless there is one thought so heretical, merely to utter it would ensure instant excommunication. I hesitate even to pose it as a question. But here goes. What if George W Bush was to prove to be one of the great American presidents?

At first blush, it seems a nonsensical proposition. As I write, Bush's poll ratings have plunged to the Nixonian depths; one of his top officials, “Scooter” Libby has been indicted on perjury charges, while his closest counsel, Karl Rove, remains under investigation; Bush has botched a Supreme Court nomination; he stands accused of ballooning the federal deficit; images of the dead floating in the streets of a flooded, Katrina-hit New Orleans still linger in the American imagination; and, gravest of all, the death toll of US personnel killed in Iraq is in excess of 2,000. The Bush presidency, even some Republicans predict, will be remembered only as a disaster.

And yet history has a funny habit of messing with presidencies. Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a joke by plenty of Europeans and Brits in the 1980s, yet he is revered in the United States as one of the great occupants of the highest office: the national airport bears his name. Even Richard Nixon, for a quarter century a byword for presidential calamity, has found himself the object of some benign revisionism in the last few years. This new version holds that Nixon was strategically sound on the Cold War and surprisingly moderate at home, and therefore insists that his place in the history books should no longer be reducible to that single word: Watergate. Could the historians of the future take a similar, kindly second look at the 43rd president of the United States?

His first achievement is straightforwardly political. Any president who wins re-election deserves to be taken seriously. Bush's feat is all the more impressive when you consider the circumstances of his initial installation in the White House. In 2000 he lost the popular vote to Al Gore, only winning the presidency after a bitter dispute and the intervention of the judiciary. The last president to have such an inauspicious start was Rutherford B Hayes in 1876 – and he did not so much as seek re-election. Bush, by contrast, dispelled any doubts over his legitimacy by winning his own mandate in 2004. En route, he saw his party gain seats in the House and Senate in the midterm elections of 2002, the first first-term president to pull that trick off since FDR in 1934. As things stand, Bush has won the triple crown, giving his party control of the presidency, House and Senate – with domination of the third branch of government, the judiciary, the attendant reward. This is a substantial political record on any measure.

But it is that last accomplishment for which the conservatives of the future may thank him. For it will be Bush – not Reagan, nor Nixon – who will have made real what was a conservative dream for decades: control of the Supreme Court. Yes, his path to it was bumpy – with the Harriet Miers nomination an embarrassment – but the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito seem set to entrench the conservative ascendancy in the US for another generation at least. This refashioned bench will make decisions that will long outlive the actions of politicians and, thanks to Bush, those decisions will now be conservative. The result is that Bush's legacy to the US may well be nothing less than the legal and social mores of the 21st century.

Of course, any claim to greatness will depend on Iraq, a word as sure to be engraved on the heart of Bush as Calais was on Mary Tudor's. Today's conventional wisdom, taking in every foreign ministry in the world – including most of the US State Department – holds that Operation Enduring Iraqi Freedom has been a tragedy of errors. Based on faulty premises, disingenuously sold and incompetently planned, the mission of 2003 is widely regarded as an abject failure.

But the future may not see it that way. The war removed one of the most hated tyrants of modern times, shifting Saddam Hussein from a palace to a prison cell. Couple that with the toppling of the Taliban, a regime of cruelty and brutal philistinism, and Bush's defenders have a powerful opening argument.

Next, they can point further afield. For didn't the war in Iraq, admittedly prosecuted at a high and bloody price, set in train a wider series of events. Note Libya's rapid decision to come clean about, and abandon, its attempt to build weapons of mass destruction. Iran is a more complex case – rendered more complicated by the arrival of President Ahmadinejad – but it is clear that a faction, at least, within Iran's bifurcated government wishes to follow Libya's lead. The 2003 war established, through shock and awe, that any effort to go nuclear can bring terrible consequences.

There has been a chain reaction of a different kind, too. Lebanon is the clearest example, with its Cedar Revolution leading to an outburst of people power on the streets of Beirut – and the ejection of the Syrian occupier. Tentative moves toward electoral democracy have followed in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Bahrain. Even Syria seems, grudgingly, to understand that it lives in a changed region and that it too will have to adapt.

None of these advances should be exaggerated; they do not on their own amount to the flowering of “freedom and democracy” imagined so floridly in Bush's set-piece speeches. Those set out the belief that US interests are no longer served by propping up vile (if US-friendly) tyrants, but are best aided by the establishment of democracy. Yes, there are contradictions and hypocrisies, but that shift represents a break from at least 60 years of US foreign policy – and in the right direction. If Washington was to honour this ideal, articulated well by Bush, then the world would be a better place.

Of course, these recent changes in Lebanon and the like may come to nothing. But the opposite is at least possible. These shifts may deepen and spread. If the Iraqis do, despite everything, inch towards constitutional self-rule, the momentum may be hard to stop. People across the Muslim and Arab world will see that reform and democracy is real – and they will want some of it for themselves.

These are all big ifs. For every step forward Bush has inspired, there have been steps back: Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray have discredited the cause of US-led democracy more than Bush's warm words have promoted it. But change will eventually come to the Middle East, just as it came, eventually, to Eastern Europe. And, when it does, it is at least conceivable that the man future generations will credit as the pioneer will be none other than George W Bush.