Alex Massie Alex Massie

The View from Inside the Cocoon

It can be dangerous to be more catholic than the Pope. That was my immediate reaction to John O’Sullivan’s piece on David Cameron in the latest issue of National Review. O’Sullivan dismisses the notion that there’s anything the Republican party can, let alone should, learn from the Cameronian Makeover.

O’Sullivan is hardly alone in thinking this. That is, British conservatives exiled in Washington tend to disdain Toryism. From their comfortable berths at Heritage, AEI or National Review they tend to think British conservatism is fatally muddied by compromise and lacking the appealing clarity of the dominant strands in American conservatism. They dislike the uncomfortable truth that Britain is not an ideological country and forget that Thatcherism was a minority pursuit even within the Conservative party. They join American conservatives in worshipping at the altar of Ronnie and Maggie, forgetting that times change and so do voters.

Danny Finkelstein simply demolishes O’Sullivan’s argument that the extent of the Tory collapse has been exaggerated and that, subsequently, any lack of enthusiasm for Cameron is the product of his moderation and willingness to “appease” voters who deserted the party. O’Sullivan writes, for instance, that:

“The incautious reader might imagine that the Tories stuck to right-wing “traditionalist” policies after 1997. But certain standard phrases in the narrative, including “after a short flirtation with modernizing” and “they retreated to their comfort zone,” give the game away. In reality, after each defeat the Tory leadership, far from banging on about taxes and immigration, adopted the modernizers’ progressive but vague agenda of diversity, inclusiveness, etc. These ideological gestures, in addition to failing to win over targeted centrist voters, minimized bedrock Tory support. Facing imminent catastrophe at the polls, the Tory leaders then switched to more traditional policies — too late to win the election but just in time to save the modernizers from blame for the defeat.

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