Home > Alex Massie

Monday 21 May 2012

The Cameron Project: Three Views from America

Wednesday, 5th May 2010

David Frum graciously plays the role of referee in this year's Massie vs O'Sullivan discussion and delivers what is, I think, a fair judgement. He grants that O'Sullivan is right to warn about the danger that the Cameron Project might seem inauthentic or cynical and that, as David puts it, "the extremity of the crisis" Britain faces has made some of Cameron's ideas and, more still, his style seem out of touch at times.

Nevertheless, he concludes:

A conservatism that fuses economic rationality with a concern for social cohesion is for Britain more than an electoral proposition. It is the kind of conservatism a riven and troubled society requires. Like John O’Sullivan, I feel my due share of nostalgia for the crusading conservatism of the Thatcher years. Margaret Thatcher saved her country from ossification into socialized stagnation, and she deserves for that achievement all the credit history will lavish on her. But in addition to that ongoing concern, Britain struggles today with many other troubles. Does Cameron have the answer? Maybe no. At least he has the questions, and that’s a start.

This puts Frum in the same camp, I think, as Ross Douthat for whom "Cameron is offering a more detailed and specific vision of what conservative reform might mean than almost any English-speaking politician since the Reagan-Thatcher era."

Of course Ross also worries that:

[T]here may simply not be time to implement the kind of ambitious, long-term transformation he has in mind. Britain’s debt burden is worse even than that of the United States, and the fiscal crunch is looming. The window for big ideas may be closing, on both sides of the Atlantic and for right and left alike. In this election season, Cameron has tried to advance an idealistic politics of conservative reform. But he may find himself governing amid the grim politics of a permanent fiscal crisis.

Meanwhile, over at the American Conservative Daniel Larison argues:

One reason why I was not able to take Cameron that seriously for a very long time was my assumption that his re-branding efforts would involve nothing more than co-opting New Labour themes, and over the last few years I have found plenty of things to criticize about Cameron, but what is so surprising about the “Big Society” manifesto is how unlike the centralizing “reform” or “compassionate” conservatism it is. Where Bush was constantly inserting the federal government into the work of charitable institutions, schools and local communities where it had not been before, Cameron is proposing that social institutions take over for an intrusive state. Maybe it will never happen, and maybe the society Cameron wants to entrust with these responsibilities has atrophied so much on account of dependence on state institutions that it will not be up to the task, but as far as the concentration of power is concerned it is nothing like the modernized Toryism I was expecting.

And this is the thing. You can explain the Tories difficulties in this campaign in any number of ways but one of them is that, at a time of financial uncertainty, the Tories have launched their most ambitious, "biggest" manifesto in thirty years. This is bold or brave or whatever other synonym for political adventurism you care to choose. It is risky to run on an ambitious platform in cramped, crabbit times. (This is not something you could accuse Labour of, that's for sure.) Here too one may detect a discordance between the Tory message and the moment in which it is delivered.

Of course there have also been problems in selling the message and finding the right way of summarising the Tories' vision of a Toquevillian future but there's been another problem too: the Conservatives have been caught between their rhetoric of "Broken Britain" and their promise of a brighter, optimistic future. The more thoroughly Britain is broken the more unlikely, even impossible, that future seems. If the Tories are right about Labour's record then their plans seem too airy-fairy, too intellectual, too unlikely to survive contact with brutal reality and useless Britain; if they're wrong then they seem unecessarily apocalyptic.

So will it work? Who knows? But it seems to me that it's a gamble that's well-worth taking, not only because there aren't any better alternatives but also because Cameron and his proposals are much more interesting and potentially rewarding than the stale and orthodox conservatism peddled and professed by some of his critics. In that sense, Cameron's relative reluctance to fall back on cheap and easy slogans is itself a small reassurance...

Filed under: Cameron (227 more articles) , Conservatives (2295 more articles) , Election 2010 (599 more articles) , Tories (273 more articles)

Previous Back to Alex Massie Next

Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Melanie Phillips | Coffee House | Faith Based

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (5)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

shorpe

May 5th, 2010 1:21pm Report this comment

"Cameron's relative reluctance to fall back on cheap and easy slogans is itself a small reassurance..."

My my, don't you think the word "relative" is doing rather a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence? I'm prepared to be convinced that the Tories have bold, complex solutions up their sleeves, but Cameron himself is one of the most platitudinous party leaders of modern times, almost in the same league as his political role model, Tony Blair. I'm afraid I'm not the only one who looks at David Cameron and is unable to see anything but the distilled essence of substance-free, PR-driven politics. "A hollow easter egg with no bag of sweets inside", as Charlie Brooker so memorably put it.

Tiberius

May 5th, 2010 3:46pm Report this comment

If you're looking to fisk, shorpe, I would point out the word "see" in your analysis and ask whether you mean "see" literally or metaphorically.

Cameron has spoken about individual responsibility (which is the crux of his policymaking) since his 2005 Conference speech. Yet there are many serious commentators who have persisted in saying they cannot "see" what he is all about.

Perhaps the answer is to "listen" to what he has said. I am in no doubt that his underlying theme has been there right from the beginning.

shorpe

May 5th, 2010 4:43pm Report this comment

@Tiberius

Hold the presses! Tory leader says he favours greater individual responsibility!

Of course he says all these things, of course he makes some of the right noises; my point was that, even if he is sincere, he lacks the ability to make it sound like more than empty sloganeering. There's also the fact that a lot of the party's direction changes under Cameron have been extremely "tell us what you believe in and we'll stand for it", like suddenly giving a shit about green issues.

In any case, I wasn't making an absolute judgement on Cameron. It's perfectly possible I'm wrong, that he really is the man for our times and destined to take the country in a new, better direction. I was just trying to get across why I find that very hard to believe, and that I don't think I'm alone.

Cuffleyburgers

May 5th, 2010 5:28pm Report this comment

I think Cameron has achieved a mircale in terms of de-toxifying the tory brand to quote a phrase, and coming up with an attractive manifesto. Bear in mind that in order to achieve anything in government fist he has to win, which means not losing. In a country which gets a large part of its news and analysis from a body which is totally inimical to the Tories as a matter of instinct (the BBC), this is no mean achievement.

The intake of Tory MPs this time by all accounts will oblige Cameron in practice to steer a more eurosceptic, small state, free amrket course even than he has pushed in the campaign.

He has done well not to descend to the level of the disgraceful Labour campaign and its pitiful leader, and I think a majority of the electorate (essentially a decent intelligent lot) will be prepared to reward him for it.

Brown's campaign has been all about trying to shore up his core vote, he can only have replled swing voters by his performance.

Clegg - shooting star, gone too soon.

By the way the latets Tory attack ad is fantastic, and great timing.

shorpe

May 5th, 2010 6:30pm Report this comment

@Cuffley

I agree that Cameron deserves credit for genuinely modernising the Conservative party. Despite what some others on the left may think, I honestly believe they've left their homophobic, crypto-racist (or occasionally, just plain racist) days behind them. That's why the idea of Cameron as PM doesn't horrify me in quite the way Michael Howard did.

Post comment