I’ve said very little about David Cameron, in large part because I’m not sure quite how I feel. Generally speaking, I’m most interested in thinking about the strongest indigenous strategy, not necessarily the position I’d embrace on substantive grounds. For example, I’ve long believed that the British center-right would be wise to embrace Anglo-Gaullism, or what Sebastian Mallaby calls “the Frenchification of British foreign policy.”

Suffice to say, I’m not one for “Frenchification” as a general rule, though I do have a soft spot for beret-sporting women in black-and-white horizontal stripes, but Blair’s embrace of the Bush Doctrine writ large (and writ somewhat more sophisticatedly) presented the Conservatives with a clear opportunity to pursue a “blue ocean strategy.”

Ken Clarke tried to do exactly that, but he failed thanks to the extremely pro-American cast of Britain’s conservative intellectual elite. Michael Gove is a brilliant man, and a lot of the so-called Michael Moore Conservatives are pretty loathsome, but let’s be honest. Is it clear that the Iraq intervention has appreciably improved Britain’s security? ~Reihan Salam

I think Reihan is basically right about the politics of a shift in Tory foreign policy towards Mallaby’s description of a more pro-European, “Frenchified” British foreign policy.  I also happen to think that a British foreign policy carried out in the national interests of Britain, even if that sometimes diverges from our own, would be the healthiest and best thing for Anglo-American relations.  Cameron clearly stands to benefit from an anti-Blair backlash on foreign policy (in fending off the rumours that he tried to off Blair with the recent “coup,” Brown has been obliged to say what a wonderful foreign policy Blair has had, which makes him the less likely beneficiary of public dissatisfaction with interventionism).  If Cameron can avoid being trivial (a difficult task for him) and can avoid mocking every past Tory Government’s policies, he might very well convince the so-called “Michael Moore Conservatives” (i.e., probably about 80% of the Conservative Party’s voters) that he is their man on foreign policy.  As of yet, I don’t think they are convinced that he really is.  The same people who might be cheered by Cameron’s hints at being less robustly pro-American are also exactly the same kind of people who find his cloying demeanour and sucking up to the likes of Nelson Mandela irritating and discouraging.  With Hague as shadow foreign secretary, he can retain the general posture of an Atlanticist, but an Atlanticist who doesn’t bow and scrape like, er, Hague used to do.  

But I admit to being perplexed by the statement that “a lot” of so-called “Michael Moore Conservatives” are “pretty loathsome.”  Loathsome how?  To whom?  I suppose their “loathsome” qualities depend on your point of view.  For someone of the Daniel Hannan school, who idolises the Roundheads and Cromwell and can’t stop gushing about democracy, Little Englanders and Arabists must indeed seem fairly loathsome, and I expect that the feeling is mutual.  For those of us who would be glad to hear Sir Malcolm Rifkind, or someone like him, talking common sense as Foreign Secretary (and who would be fairly overjoyed if we had a Secretary of State with 10% of the common sense of Sir Malcolm), it is a bit of a puzzle how any of these people–whom the Standard insulted with their Michael Moore comparison–are “pretty loathsome.”  Perhaps they are wrong or perhaps they even advocate policies that Reihan considers “loathsome,” but that still makes me wonder: loathsome how?

Adrian Wooldridge started his article for the Standard in May 2004 with the following:

A retired Foreign Office panjandrum denounced the Bush administration for its crass ignorance of the Arab world. A curmudgeonly barrister proclaimed his intention to march for peace. A senior banker complained that he can’t visit New York these days without being shocked by the money-grubbing vulgarity of the place.  The only person who didn’t regard George W. Bush as a warmongering simpleton was an American émigré who had worked for Richard Perle in the Pentagon back in the 1980s. 

This was my first introduction to the world of Britain’s Michael Moore conservatives.

Yes, he’s really got them there!  Except that the administration is shockingly ignorant of the Arab world (and the rest of the world, too), the banker had every good reason to oppose a war that 70% of his countrymen opposed, and as for the vulgarity of New York….The article goes on from there to lament the foreign policy views of folks from the shires and other expressions of anti-Bush sentiment from various and sundry prominent Tories.  An immortal line from one MP on Bush: “he looks as if he might wail at the moon.”  That is probably kinder than someone of the things I have said in my less charitable moments.   To all of this I have only one response: it sounds like a lot of conservatives responding quite understandably to an astonishingly anti-conservative politician.  If this makes them confreres of Michael Moore, the comparison should only improve conservatives’ opinions of Michael Moore–but the comparison is, of course, tendentious and overdrawn. 

Obviously, I don’t much care for Mr. Bush or his policies, I am a paleo (and thus almost constitutionally required to disagree with whatever someone at the Standard says) and regard military interventionism in most cases as being just this side of treason, so I am unlikely to find much wrong with British folks who don’t care much for Bush and oppose interventionist wars (or at least interventionist wars that seem to have nothing whatever to do with Britain).  But nonetheless I read on and tried to find something positively loathsome about these people, only to find this:

The other wing of the party, the Little Englander right, is best known for its loathing of the European Union. But it is equally rabid about the United States, a prejudice that was kept under the surface in the Thatcher era but is now bursting out in its full glory. The patron saint of the Little Englanders, Enoch Powell, made no secret of the fact that, if he was forced to choose between America and the Soviet Union, he might have a hard job making up his mind.

The Little Englanders are the heirs of the 1930s appeasers who once proclaimed that they would not “die for Danzig.” They regard the Iraq war as providing perfect proof of two of their most cherished principles. The first is that American conservatism is nothing more than neoliberalism in fancy dress. What is all this idealistic talk about spreading democracy around the Middle East? The second is that foreign entanglements–be they European superstates or Iraqi expeditionary forces–are a bad thing.  

I realise that for the usual audience that reads the Standard, all of this is pretty hard-hitting stuff.  I mean, Enoch Powell and “appeasement,” all rolled into one?  Goodness!  That sort of thing would strike the average neocon as proof of an entire nation’s perfidy.  To me it comes off sounding like…a bunch of conservatives objecting to wars that are not in the national interest (why should Englishmen have died for Danzig or Czechoslovakia or Poland or…?) and a perfectly understandable conservative hostility to ideological fantasies about exporting democracy to the four corners of the world.  I would like to disabuse them of their view of American conservatism, but the vast majority of self-styled American conservatives make it very hard to do this.  Now why is it I have a hard time finding this “loathsome”?  Besides, if these Conservatives do not pass the Standard‘s test of what makes a good conservative (good grief, they’re anti-Sharon, too!), that is probably just one more indication that they are all right.