The British Obama?

JR

What a load of guff. Obama's success has been as running as an outsider. Cameron is hardly an outsider - ex-CCO, ex-SPAD to Tory Cabinet ministers, Eton & Oxbridge. I had to laugh at Dave's speech yesterday - lambasting spin and pledging openess when he has Michael Ashcroft running Tory Central Office and paying Andy Coulson a huge salary to spin for him. This is lame focus group politics at its worst.

Percepied, London

I wonder if this is also, in part, about positioning the Conservatives in a way that opens greater possibilities of a coalition with the Lib Dems in the event of a hung Parliament.

The outsider/change agenda has long been part of Lib Dem policy and presentation, but they have never been seen as having the weight and electoral credibility to carry this through.

Whatever the 'vision' behind the speech, Cameron is also appealing to Lib Dem/Conservative swing voters. Squeezing the Lib Dem vote may not in itself be enough to ensure a Conservative majority at the next election, but it might provide a strong bargaining chip for the Conservatives.

This change agenda might be something the Lib Dems could buy into ideologically, and if their vote is squeezed, a coalition becomes a pragmatic option for the Lib Dem leadership if they are to remain a relevant political force.

A forged Conservative/Lib Dem consensus becomes Cameron's 'third way' .

sam

This is first class brand analysis displaying great insight. It deserves praise. JR should reflect on Argumentum ad hominem and consider the quality of the thinking in this article. Personal grudges contibute nothing to the debate.

mike

Cameron is an actor and a phony, Blair was an actor as was Maggie.You would have to be really silly if you think when your average voter goes out to re-elect Labour in a couple of years he will be thinking about Obama or Cameron.

David

It also ignores that fact that Obama himself is hardly the outsider he portrays himself as, having gone to Columbia and Harvard. The outsider status comes from being relatively unknown amongst the wider electorate and suddenly being thrust centre stage. Much like Cameron.

Kelly Pierce

Cameron is a toff and a phoney and I can see him a mile away. He looks like the lot of posh toff, buttered corn cheeks. He makes me cringe. Barack Obama is the geniune article. He will be the change he says, just look at him!

Simon

what an intelligent and thoughtful piece Fraser. No doubt you'll be back to Simon Heffer tomorrow!

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

Obama himself is very much an insider. And although being a state senator doesn't carry close to the prestige of being a member of Congress, he was nevertheless an Illinois senator for two terms. I think he also edited the Harvard Law Review. His resumé is wafer thin, but his is not exactly someone who stumbled in from the sticks with a dream of reshaping America.

Nicholas

I see the Labour trolls are active today. "Toff" appears again - say it again enough times and you might implant it in the minds of the 0.0001% of the population still interested in class war. And mike seems to know who is going to win the next election - does he know something we don't or is it because New Labour are planning to rig it? Also which is the correct spelling - mike's "phony" or Kelly Pierce's "phoney"?

Faceless Bureaucrat

My, my - what a quiet Sunday it must be for our NuLab supporting posters today. Yes, Dave has indeed plugged into the public's discontent with the current political circus in the UK and it really doesn't matter whether he truly believes in it, or whether he has simply 'got lucky' on using it as a PR exercise. The electorate are desperate for something to believe in - desperate to hope that at least somebody is listening to them - what the heck, it worked for Blair in 1997! Every so often, citizens feel ignored, lied to or taken for granted and seek out a champion they can put their faith in - just as the UK originally felt about Blair. Yes, Dave my not truly believe in what he is currently saying, but it is resonating with an awful lot of people across the country. If I were Gordon Brown I would be worried, very worried...

THX1138

The Chocolate Orange Inspector- How can the son of Kenyan goat herder married to the daughter of Chicago dustman be an insider? Dave on the other hand is the son of a stockbroker & is married to a Baronets daughter & only got his first job in central office because a Queens equerry rang up & demanded that he be given one & quickly. Dave maybe the candidate of change & if I believe he is I will vote for him but anti establishment he is most certainly not. I suppose a toff PM would be a change though.

Max Kaye

Why do you think we'd want an empty suit? I'd rather the leader of the Conservative Party was the British Reagan - or better still - the new Thatcher.

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

Thx1138 - He's in the establishment. If I'm not mistaken, he edited The Harvard Review for God's sake! He has a prestigious law degree where he would have made friends with some seriously rich and influential people. No one said Dave is anti-establishment, and frankly, I don't believe Obama is either. He's a self-delusional egoist along the model of Tony Blair.

TGF UKIP

JR, you've got it exactly right - "lame focus group politics at its worst." The Heir is assiduous in following in the Blair and Clinton footsteps in their devotion to focus groups and Hilton has obviously been relaying the message that the groups warm to Obama and the "change" agenda. And Fraser, in your list of comparisons and parallels why didn't you include that both Obama and Dave are both liberal social democrats with large appetites for taxpayers money and big spending e.g. an extra £28 bn down the bottomless pit of the NHS. With Government expenditure at £617bn (£36k per household) why oh why can't we have a Conservative Party arguing passionately for conservative policies instead of all this focus group crap encouraged by jounalists who should know better.

Fergus Pickering

We haven't had a toff since Sir Alec Douglas-Home. We've had two working-class lads (Callaghan, Major)who didn't do too well. Time for a toff, I'd say.

THX1138

The Chocolate Orange Inspector- Cool name by the way. Obama might have edited the The Harvard Review whatever that is but he got there with out any help on the way which certainly cannot be said for our boy Dave. I think we are seeing the beginning of a new establishment in the US & a better one & more of the same whoever wins over here. Nicholas with both parties basically talking about the same thing & with virtually no ideological difference between them it's feels like the next election we will be like shareholders voting for a different CEO to run a FTSE 100 company. Without any real ideological differences what else do we have left to argue about except class? I think your making a huge mistake if you think class is no longer important in 21 Century Britain look at all the Michael Martin reporting all about class. Also what's wrong with dissenting comment this blog would get very stale & boring if we all agreed with each other. Melanie "Nurse Ratched" Phillips blog suffers from a zero tolerance of dissenting opinion from Matrons. The acolytes attack most viciously & personally if you disagree with her as I discovered when I strayed over there last week for a bit of harmless commenting. I thought for one minute I had typed the wrong URL & was one CIF

Ian H

Fraser, I'm afraid to say you wrote this better in the news of the world and in about half the space.

Nick Kaplan

Kelly Pierce ; “Cameron is a Toff….He makes me cringe” doesn’t that just ring of fair minded rational thought. This reverse bigotry really is quite sickening, I thought the idea of discriminating against someone due to their background was something we gave up on in the 1800’s, but it seems quite horrifically prevalent on the left if you listen to Galloway, Harmen, Jowel, Blears bleating our their class war bigotry as a substitute for a decent argument. The idea that one should not vote for Cameron because he is a toff is as ludicrous as the suggestion that one should not vote for Brown because he working class (as opposed to incompetent) or Obama because he’s black (as opposed to lacking any policy) or Hillary because she’s a women. These are factors that in no way impact on someone’s ability to do a job and it is repulsive to realize so many people think it differently. Kelly, your ludicrous comments serve only to prove you are a narrow minded bigot, not that Cameron isn’t worth voting for.

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

Nick Kaplan, with respect, Gordon Brown is far from working class. His family owns half the businesses in his little town, and he is also, as they say, a son of the manse. So never was working class and I think the prestige his family enjoyed in his small town accounts for his grating sense of entitlement. In addition, Obama isn't black. He is mixed race. Fifty-fifty. His mother was a white girl from Kansas. He has chosen to play his hand as a black. His choice. Both Brown and Obama are objectionable in their own right. I feel the same way about Cameron. It's nothing to do with his background. THX1138 - The Harvard Review - Mega prestige. And certainly Obama would have been noticed - especially within Ivy League Academe. He is very intelligent, he's handsome, he's elegant, he's a clothes horse ... and he has, like Brown, a sense of entitlement bordering on lunacy. I dislike him on merit. Like Brown and like Cameron. Not one of these men has any capacity to head a government. Not one of them has a clear idea of how he intends to serve his country once he gets his polished shoes under the desk.

David Lindsay

Well, we may pass over the theory that Cameron is an anti-Establishment figure.

But can anyone think of how he might duplicate Obama's two most disappointing features: running as black when he is only black by chance, could just as easily have been white, and would probably have had at least one white full sibling if he had had any; and courting the African-American political machine when he could have run as the non-white candidate pointedly not beholden to the black, Hispanic or any other grievance industry?

Not much sign of "change" there.

Though still more than the none whatever offered by David Cameron's merely posher version of New Labour.

Keep tellinmg yourself that Cameron believes in Swedish-style school vouchers and Wisconsin-style welfare, Fraser. (And how Blairy are they, anyway?) You might even end up believing it. But it still won't be true.

Kevyn Bodman

THX1138: I think you are a lttle bit hard on the commenters on Melaie's page. I'm a big Mel Phillips fan but I think she's wrong on drugs (you think that too, I remember) and on 42 day detention without trial, and I go over there and say so. Not all the replies are calm and address the issues, but by no means all of them have it as their aim to stamp on dissent. Keep visiting, you can shrug off the malicious responses. And Melanie herself is consistently the most thought-provoking British journalist.

bom

i think the comparison is laughable, quite frankly. obama is constantly poised, likeable and eloquent. his message and campaign have motivated the american youth, he's on the verge of toppling the political tree-trunk that is Billary Clinton and popstars have made videos about him. Cameron, on the other hand, is a whiny, tory whipper-snapper who's about as appealing as atheletes foot. he has no charisma, no coherent message, he constantly makes annoying non-points at PMQs, and his video blog is so forced and boring its hilarious. i'm an 18 year old student who invests not an ounce of my being into labour or tory, but if i vote, it'll be for Brown. i'm baffled as to what Cameron offers that Brown does not - he is an extremely unexceptional leader who flip-flops, finger-jabs, and rambles without ever making a coherent point that Brown can't make better. any opposition worth my vote would have ripped this government to pieces. the conservatives are MIA... Cameron just isn't PM material.

Fergus Pickering

My wife tells me that John Major was not working class but lower middle class. Brown must be middle class though if Dad was a Minister of the Church of Scotland. He WISHES he were working class, but that's quite another thing. But toffs are what we want. Well-educated. No chips on shoulders. By the way, why isn't Blair a toff?

Water

Cameron Should join Labour. The mere fact the article begins by comparing Obama to Blair, then Cameron to Obama speaks volumes.

Oscar Miller

Excellent article Fraser - very perceptive. A quick word on acting. As a lifelong lover of theatre it carries no perjorative sense for me. Good acting is not remotely equivalent to phoniness. Great acting works because the actor can inhabit the genuine emotion of the role. Acting skills are actually a very important part of politics, central to oratory which is becoming a much undervalued skill. I'm grateful to Barack Obama for reviving appreciation of this great art. Acting and sincerity are not polar opposites at all. Blair was a good 'actor' because he was sincere. Cameron speaks well because he means what he says - his intelligence and language are in tune with each other. I suspect Brown is such a poor orator (and such a poor 'actor') because he seems peculiarly disconnected from his feelings. He can't express any core emotional truth. Consequently the words don't flow. Sincerity, of course, is not in itself always a good thing. (I'm sure Hitler was sincere and this aided his oratory). Sincerity has to come with a lot of ethical checks and balances. And I always worry about 'pathos' - emotion sweeping aside rational argument (and this is what concerns me about Barack). Cameron patently does not suffer from this. He is a lucid and persuasive speaker but not one who makes lurid appeals to emotion. But don't knock acting - it's central to oratory and communication. Good acting aids and does not suppress honesty.

Oscar Miller

Err Bom - Something does not compute here. Why exactly would an 18 year old a-political student suddenly decide to blog anti-Cameron stuff on the Spectator's Coffee House? A cynic might think you were a Labour troll adopting a persona. But I'm not a cynic. So what exactly motivated you to come here?

THX1138

David Lindsay - So Obama is only black by chance is he. Is that better or worse in your eyes than being black on purpose?

Nicholas

bom it makes not the slightest sense to state that an effective opposition could rip Brown's government to pieces and then, for someone who invests not an ounce of his being into labour or tory, commit to voting Labour at the next election. Curious, too, that an 18 year old should have such a poor concept of personal liberty that he would vote for a government that represents the greatest threat to it since the corporal arrived on the channel coast of France. Cameron has offered freedom from Big Government, Brown has not and in fact his policies will impose more of it. As Oscar has commented something not quite right about it. Best thing you could do, old chum, is not vote at all. If you really are a-political I don't want the likes of you forcing another 5 years of Labour on the likes of me.

Nick Kaplan

Well said Nicholas, sadly Bom’s poor conception of political liberty is quite common of people in our age group (I’m 19 and I’m subject to it almost daily at university). Unfortunately they confuse the idea of liberty, which is freedom from interference and the right to get on with doing what one wants to do, with some bizarre notion of entitlement to do a particular thing at someone else’s expense. Thus they view the government (without considering that this means the tax payer) as an enabling actor who provides freedom to people who are unable to currently do certain things that they would like to do. They fail to understand that it is the individual’s responsibility to make those opportunities for themselves e.g. through working hard to earn enough money to do what it is one desires. Real Liberty consists in a small state that provides the social and economic conditions under which you can make these opportunities for yourself or that others freely choose to provide through charity, this, I believe is what Cameron is planning to establish and I for one will vote for him. Sadly it is also what Obama seems intent on destroying in America, the comparison between the 2 extends little further than their style.

THX1138

Nicholas- "I don't want the likes of you forcing another 5 years of Labour on the likes of me." Isn't that rather the point of democracy?

Verity

Bom - Thanks for starting my week with a laugh! I chuckled away over my breakfast tea. quite frankly. obama is constantly poised, likeable and eloquent. Being "constantly poised" is a qualification for being president? Since when? his message and campaign have motivated the american youth> Which American youth is that, so we can inform his parents? Referring to Cameron, and his video blog is so forced and boring its hilarious. Surely if something is hilarious, meaning, engages one in laughter, it's not boring? i'm an 18 year old student who invests not an ounce of my being into labour or tory Uh-huh. And I am Marie of Roumania.

Verity

David Lindsay - How are you managing to get spacing between your paragraphs? I've tried everything and it still comes up as one big wadge.

David Lindsay

Fergus Pickering, who cares about Blair these days? And yes, there is all the difference in the world between the middle (Brown), or even the upper middle (Blair), and the very, very top (Cameron). Consider what would happen if a group of that old boys of the comp attended (though not at the same time) by Anne McElvoy and me, the same age as Oxford undergraduates, formed themselves into an organisation - complete with a name, a uniform, officers and a membership list - specifically for the purpose of becoming drunk and disorderly before committing criminal damage and even assault. They would rightly be sent to prison, whereas the Bullingdon Boys go on to become, simultaneously, an aspirant Prime Minister, an aspirant Chancellor of the Exchequer, and an aspirant Mayor of London. Eton is not the point. Oxford is not the point. The Bullingdon Club is the point. THX1138, Obama could just as easily have been white; we mixed-race people understand these things: my two brothers are much lighter than my sister and me. Obama is the embodiment of race as only skin deep, yet he courts the black political machine even though it an aspect of a distinct ethnic group to which he himself does not belong. Verity, I don't know. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

THX1138

Spectator Webmaster-Can you publish a guide to blogging which shows how to put in paragraphs inbed URl's etc. While your at add a preview function so we can what we have written as it will appear on the screen before we post.

Verity

David Lindsay, I don't often agree with you, but regarding the Bullingdon Club,I'm on your side.

Fergus Pickering

What criminal damage and assault has David Cameron committed? You've been reading too much Evelyn Waugh. When I was at university, yes it was Oxford, there was plenty of criminal damage and assault committed by students right up and down the social scale. I can't remember anyone getting into much trouble for it. God Lord Philip Larkin committed criminal damage if his poem is anything to go one. Students are like that everywhere. If these Bullingdon chaps are so powerful where were they in the last three Tory administrations. And I really can't see George Osborne as a thug, can you? Ed Balls now...

Verity

Fergus Pickering - "Students are like that everywhere ...". You should have added the qualifier, "in Britain". This loutishness in students is not found elsewhere.

salieri

Depends on your definition of 'loutishness', doesn't it, Verity? If you extend it to mean brainless political violence the French are in a class of their own. Btw, isn't it time we heard some healthy abuse about Cambridge?

THX1138

Fergus Why is that everyone who went to Oxford keeps feeling the need to tell the rest of us? Toby Young in this weeks Speccie informed us that he couldn't afford to send his kids to private schools as he had such a badly paid job but it was all Ok because he had gone to Oxford. I think from now we should call it Oxurrets Syndrome the unnecessary and or unprompted blurting out of I went to Oxford in print or any social situation. Spectator Journalists seem to be particular sufferers of this very serious and depilating condition.

Fergus Pickering

I told you I had been to Oxford to make the point that students there were the same as students anywhere else. I didn't WANT to go there. I wanted to go to Edinburgh where all my friends were. But in those days you did as you were told. Oxford was quite easy to get into in those days if you came from a grammar school. They were falling over backwards to give you a place (class guilt I suppose). I wasn't even in the top ten clever boys at the Royal High School. I think it is harder now so the Speccie journalists are probably clever fellows.

angela king.

These "Toff" comments and silly remarks about where people come from and God help us, their looks, instead of their ability, are utterly pathetic. I thought intelligent people read the Spectator.

angela king

ps. Nick Kaplan, haven't you heard, our attitude to politics is supposed to be the same as our attitude to X factor. You vote for the one with the biggest hard luck story, not the person best fitted for the job, If they have had a brilliant education, and have a t rained intelligence, you are supposed to sneer at that.

Herbert Thornton

I should have thought that to call David Cameron the White Obama was rather insulting to Obama.

Unfortunately, I also have the suspicion that Obama is a kind of reincarnation of Pierre Trudeau, & if that's true it makes Obama positively frightening, so I hope to God my suspicion's unfounded.

If you want an American parallel to David Cameron, wouldn't Jimmy Carter be nearer the mark?

Perry

Oh dear . . . seems like 'Follow my leader' (the vaccuous one) all over again . . empty words . . lots of guff. Spare us any more . . please!

David Lodge

Fergus Pickering: you may indeed have a point, sir!

Archie

THX 1138: Kindly leave Melanie Phillips alone! She's a patriot (dreadfully unfashionable, I know), but I think that this country could do far worse than have more of the same.

David Lodge

Clockwork Orange Inspector: "He has chosen to play his hand as a black. His choice."
No sir! Anyone in the US who is remotely mixed race with a slight trace of some African-American blood is called, or call themselves, black. Whether this is due to peer pressure or the perceptions of the US establishment, I'm not clear.

J. Isaacs

Oxford used to be called "the Latin quarter of Cowley" (car plant) by Cambridge men. But now that the Islamic call to prayer is soon to bellow from the minaret of the mosque on the Cowley Road at the behest of the Council (see Melanie Phillips' blog passim), the city of dreaming spires should be renamed "the Muslim quarter of Cowley."

J Courtney

Cameron and the Tories are firmly behind the US Reps and Senator McCain

Comparing Dave to Obama, is one of the daftest political Analogies Ive heard in years. What ever next, John Redwood as the new JFK.

Molly

Wow, this is a terrible article. I could write better conservative drivel than this, and I'm a liberal democrat! There are so many things wrong with this, but for starters:
a) giving a speech that touches on language reminiscent of Obama's does not make you the 'British Obama'! Obama's success is not based purely on on phrases thrown out in a poorly delivered sanctimonious 'speech'.
b)advocating a 2006 speech as evidence that Cameron trumped 'Chicago's' political optimism belies a blindered awareness of world politics: Obama made his glorious foray onto the political radar in 2004 at the DNC, with arguably the most famous and powerful speech of the conference.
c)I wish people would stop arguing about a politician's social status and whether it is a help or hindrance to his ability to lead. A politician is a great leader if he manages to transcend his background entirely. The less we talk about him (or her) and the more we talk about his policies, the better he is and the better we are for it.

s blake

I hope not!
Obama has some seriously dodgy connections, not really at all appropriate for a presidential candidate!

dynor

At last a true conservative!!
Greetings from Hungary

jenni marsh

Liam Fox says the Conservative's aren't interested in running public services better than the socialists? A great statement?! Nelson you're arguement started well but it the Torys arent interested in improving public services what change can they bring about?!

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