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May 1, 2005

DUELLING DUSTBINS:

Tory story: Is Britain's once-dominant Conservative Party headed for the dustbin? (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, May 1, 2005, Boston Globe)

IN 1987, JAMES RESTON of The New York Times dropped in on the British general election and made a perceptive comparison between two countries and two leaders. Although the American people had ceased by then to think that Ronald Reagan had much left to offer them, he opined, they were still fond of him personally. By contrast, the British had never actually liked Margaret Thatcher, but they continued to think that she was doing the country good. Lady Thatcher has long been an inspiration for Tony Blair, and as he approaches the general election on Thursday, he must pray that 1987 is a hopeful precedent.

Unlike Thatcher (who, to her credit, never wanted to be liked), Blair has enjoyed a personal luster that is now unmistakably faded. Philip Gould, the prime minister's pollster, has reportedly told him in blunt terms what newspaper polls anyway confirm: Once an asset to his party, Blair is now an active liability. The question that remains to be answered on election day is whether the British still think his Labour government is doing them good.

Blair's career and position have always been curious. The political journalist-turned-novelist Robert Harris, who has known Blair longer and better than most commentators, observed last summer that for all his brilliant electoral successes he has never had a personal following within his own party. ''If Blair did have a faction,'' Harris wrote in The Daily Telegraph, ''it would probably not be on the Left at all, but located somewhere deep within the Conservative Party. Right-wing in his instincts even before he became party leader, Blair has clearly moved further to the Right since entering Downing Street.'' Almost as much as David Lloyd George more than 80 years ago, Blair has become ''a prime minister without a party.''

This also helps explain the Tories' continuing woes: A conservative leading a Labour government is a very difficult target. [...]

Here I should perhaps declare an interest, as they say in the House of Commons. I have a little dog of my own in this fight, in the form of a new book with the unoriginal but unambiguous title ''The Strange Death of Tory England.'' To publish such a book just before an election that the Conservatives might in theory win was always a gamble, and I have been wryly telling television and radio interviewers that on May 6 my book will either be reprinted or pulped.

Over the past week I have therefore watched intently as the Blair campaign team displayed increasing jitters. Despite all the efforts of the government to avoid discussing Iraq, the war has resurfaced as a central issue - and one which must remind voters of the great question mark hanging over Blair's personal honesty. Labour are terrified, not that many of their supporters will vote Tory but that, in their disillusionment, they just won't turn out.

Even so, given the polls, it will take an unimaginable upset for the Tories actually to win, and my book's argument may yet prove truer than I knew. I suggest that, while Lady Thatcher carried out a historically necessary transformation of the country, she nearly destroyed her own party in the process. Since then the country has changed and the Tories have changed, but not in the same direction. In England even more than in America, the right has won politically while the left has won culturally, but here that has spelled disaster for the Tories. [...]

Understandably some Tories look with envy at the Republicans and the electoral successes of American conservatism, compassionate or otherwise. Alas for Howard, the political and social conditions in Britain are so different, from the complete absence of a religious right (or religious anything) to the far deeper roots of collectivism, that it's hard to see any real analogy.

In this last, at least, Mr. Wheatcroft seems quite wrong. The Tory problem is, and has been since they ditched Mrs. Thatcher, that the leadership won't run on the issue where it probably has the most support in the country--opposition to the EU. Mr. Howard achieved some measure of resonance in this election when he emphasized things like crime, immigration and the like, but even he backed off of delivering the coup de grace. With UKIP pushing them from the Right and with Labour becoming increasingly restive at being a Third Way party under Blair/Brown rather than the socialist party they want to be, there's ample opportunity for the Tories to return to their Thatcherite heyday.

-REVIEW: of THE CONTROVERSY OF ZION: Jewish Nationalism, the Jewish State, and the Unresolved Jewish Dilemma By Geoffrey Wheatcroft (SERGE SCHMEMANN, NY Times Book Review)

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2005 9:00 AM

Comments

Although the American people had ceased by then to think that Ronald Reagan had much left to offer them, he opined, they were still fond of him personally.

Boy, did we biff that one. The end of the Soviet Union was quite a bit to offer, indeed.

Posted by: Matt Murphy at May 1, 2005 1:09 PM

That was James Reston, a man so stupid he once offered to write a check to his mugger, opining about America for the NY Times.

Britain is a place where anyone with any get-up-and-go got up and left. The masses, who don't want to work for a living but want all the benefits of a post-industrial society, want unity with Europe. The elite culture, both right and left, are viscerally anti-American and anti-capitalist. Watching it go back to its pre-Thatcher decrepitude in a matter of months will be great fun.

Posted by: bart at May 1, 2005 4:08 PM

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