I cannot be rational as far as Barack Obama is concerned.

To be born mixed-race is to be born into no-man’s-land. I will never be black enough, but I will also always be too black. My skin colour shuts me off from not one but two communities, and is a permanent and ineradicable reminder of an absent father. I remember, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, being given a copy of Dreams From My Father, Obama’s first book. Alan Bennett once wrote that the best moments in reading come ‘when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you’d thought special, particular to you, and here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met’. That’s what Obama’s book was like for me.

A few months later, I stayed up late to watch the Democratic convention, and I saw the same person who’d written this amazing book that had set down things I didn’t know anyone else felt in the page, now articulating a political philosophy that I had only just started to realise that I believed in a speech of force and power. I desperately and immediately wanted him to run for president; I had already, by that point, given up on John Kerry.

Four years later, I worried that it was too soon, that he might lose – to Hillary Clinton, to John McCain – that the United States wasn’t yet ready to elect a black president. I remember watching Florida go blue on the big screen in the student union and feeling a weight I hadn’t known was there lifting from my shoulders.

Most love affairs end in disappointment, failure and despair; political ones are no different. But for all it’s become voguish to talk of the end of hope, of lowered expectations, I can only – as we stand at the halfway point, and as he stands on the brink of re-election – marvel at how much he has achieved. Victory will secure universal healthcare in America, and elevate Obama to the pantheon of presidential greats. Yes, he’s fallen short of my expectations; but he could only ever have been less than what I imagined him to be.

On this side of the Atlantic, hope feels in short supply. The great institutions of our country feel stained and disfigured by scandal and betrayal in a way they’ve never done before. The vital prerequisite for hope is faith, and there is no politician in Britain today who commands anything even closely resembling faith. The only figure with approval ratings above basement level is Boris Johnson, and that’s because he’s made failure and underperformance part of his comic charm.

Hope isn’t just vital for progressives, who know that the next Labour government will not build a new Jerusalem, and nor will the one after that. Yes, without hope, our movement will very rapidly run out of reasons to march. But hope is a vital part of a functioning democracy: because if people don’t believe that they can change their lives through the ballot box then the system collapses.

This is still a time for realism; still a time to acknowledge the challenges that the next Labour government will face. But tonight we’ll hopefully be reminded what it is for faith to be rewarded, and hope to be – at least partially – fulfilled. It’s not enough to be credible. You’ve got to be able to believe, too.

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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb

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Photo: Charis Tsevis