Reading the transcript of the conversation between Hilary Armstrong, the chief whip, and Paul Marsden, the anti-war Labour MP, provides a clear insight into how the Third Way behaves at war. "Paul," Armstrong's attempt to tame the spirited backbencher began, "we are all comrades together in the Labour Party and we are all supposed to be on the same side. I want to improve your communication skills." Comrades? Yes, comrades, for we can become comrades all of a sudden when new Labour demands total loyalty.

Understandably confused by the spectacle of Tony Blair's chief whip slipping into the language of democratic socialism, Marsden replied, "What do you mean?" His bewilderment was justified. The "communication skill" Armstrong wanted to teach him was to stop communicating - "I want a guarantee that you will not talk to the media unless you speak to me first". Being "on the same side" meant, said Armstrong, accepting the slogan that "those that aren't with us are against us." Comrades must also be able to say, as Armstrong did, that "we don't have spin-doctors in No 10 - or anywhere else", and presumably deny that two and two is four.

Like so many other members of the new Labour elite, Armstrong posed as a prolier-than-thou working-class hero (or heroine, in this case) when cornered. "The trouble with people like you," she shouted at Marsden, "is that you are so clever with words that us up north can't argue back." Marsden might have replied that if Armstrong were a simple lass who couldn't understand the fancy talk of big-city folk, she wasn't the ideal candidate for the post of chief whip. As it was, he had a better riposte to Armstrong's willingness to drag all northerners down to her level. "Do you mind?" he asked. "I am a northerner myself."

The posturing and bullying and denial of the incontrovertible were in aid of the war effort. Armstrong's declaration that "war is not a matter of conscience" caused alarm. The offence that earned Marsden the anger of the whips was less noticed, but as telling. He had asked for the elected representatives of the British people to be granted a vote before British troops went into battle. This challenged the Prime Minister's monarchical prerogative to declare war without parliamentary approval. The reaction revealed the abject state of British democracy. MPs mocked Marsden behind their hands while Armstrong abused him, shouting that "It was people like you who appeased Hitler in 1938".

The appeasement charge is being thrown around with ignorant abandon by new Labour ministers who somehow expect to maintain camaraderie by accusing their comrades of being fascists or fascist dupes. The New Statesman is happy to throw it back. The leadership of all parties and their supporters in the press clearly do not know why appeasement was a disaster.

Historians will argue about the appeasers for ever, but two views have been discredited. The anti-fascist left of the l930s saw them as Nazi sympathisers who preferred Hitler to socialism. Although there were fascists around among the Tories then, as now, no one seriously believes that Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax were secret Hitlerites. Since the war, revisionists have tried to rescue Chamberlain's reputation. He made concessions to Hitler, they say, so he could buy time and build up Britain's armed forces. Nothing in the official papers supports them. Chamberlain was not following a clever strategy to prepare the democracies for an inevitable confrontation. He was gripped by the delusion that he could outmanoeuvre Hitler and avoid war. He didn't understand foreign affairs. He didn't know what he was doing.

These are exactly the accusations that the NS and other opponents of today's war level at Washington and London. We would be delighted to see Osama Bin Laden and his followers put away. But we know that battles against terrorism are fought with policemen, spies and assassins, and that bribery and guile are more effective than armadas of aircraft carriers. We do not see what a conventional air war, waged by the richest country on earth against one of the poorest, can achieve.

As Nick Cohen and Andrew Stephen write this week (see pages 12 and 14), a similar confusion afflicts the leaders of the "west". Bush's Washington is a shambles, and the time has long passed when sympathy and politeness should stop us saying so. The failed Republican politicians and corporate donors of the Bush administration are incapable of providing leadership. When presented with an anthrax panic that is turning into mass hysteria, they inflame the terrors by raising the vanishingly small chance of a smallpox epidemic. To put it at its mildest, Congress and the White House, gripped by fears of plagues, are proving incapable of running an intelligent military campaign.

New Labour London, meanwhile, maintains outward support for war while viewing America with growing alarm. Britain is meant to be against attacking Iraq. But our ministers don't know what they will do if the hawks in Washington triumph and America widens the war. Jack Straw and Clare Short have rightly ruled out supporting the mass murderers in the Northern Alliance. At the time of going to press, American air power was doing just that. What will Britain do? No one can tell us.

Meanwhile, the bombing campaign and the famine it is exacerbating are earning Britain and America the hatred of the Islamic world. Far from defeating terrorism, we are encouraging it and turning Bin Laden and the Taliban into martyrs. Winston Churchill warned against martyring your enemies when he wrote: "The grass grows green over the battlefield, but never on the scaffold." Doubtless Ms Armstrong would condemn him as an appeaser.

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