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The Tory Predicament

This distancing from the US introduced an element of incoherence into Conservative foreign policy. A Thatcherite hand-bagging of Europe only really makes sense emotionally and strategically if it is balanced by a warm embrace of the US [bold mine-DL]. But Mr Cameron knows that many British voters now associate the special relationship with involvement in […]

This distancing from the US introduced an element of incoherence into Conservative foreign policy. A Thatcherite hand-bagging of Europe only really makes sense emotionally and strategically if it is balanced by a warm embrace of the US [bold mine-DL]. But Mr Cameron knows that many British voters now associate the special relationship with involvement in unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bureaucrats of Brussels may not be particularly popular in Britain: but at least the price for Britain’s membership of the EU is not paid in blood.

The Tories have a particular problem with the US because their sister-party is the Republicans. Like many youngish politicians, Mr Cameron would dearly love to embrace President Barack Obama and to drink deeply from his aura – if such a thing is possible. But the Tory leader has to pretend that the US politicians he is closest too are the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

This is a pretence that is increasingly painful. The special relationship between Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan was based on a genuine meeting of minds. The two leaders shared core beliefs in anti-communism and small government. But, since then, the Republicans have moved right and the Tories have moved left. The Republican party has just made it clear that it regards state-run healthcare as on a par with Satanism. But Mr Cameron tells British voters that he treasures the National Health Service. Only last week, the Tory leader gave a speech on community organisation in which he explicitly praised the late Saul Alinsky – a Chicago-based social organiser who is a bogeyman for many Republicans, who regard him as Mr Obama’s socialist Godfather. ~Gideon Rachman

Rachman does a fairly good job describing the divergence between Tories and Republicans, and he makes several good points as he defines the Tory predicament, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Tories have become incoherent. On foreign policy at least, my impression is that Cameron is attempting to achieve a difficult balance between an Atlanticism that is not mindless and reflexive (as Blair’s was) and a Euroskepticism that is likewise not unreasonably hostile to Europe. Blair was really the worst of both worlds: inflexibly Europhile (and therefore badly out of step with his country) and insanely supportive of every American initiative (and therefore badly out of step with his country). Cameron is unlikely to please the extremes of his party on these questions, but it seems to me that his views on relations with the U.S. and the EU are no more incoherent than what the British public prefers.

I am not British, so perhaps the idea that Britain must choose between subservience to Washington or subjugation to Brussels makes more sense to those who are, but it doesn’t seem as if Britain should have to confuse a “warm embrace of the U.S.” with total support for whatever Washington wants to do no matter the cost to Britain. As I mentioned in my last column, Cameron has shown an interesting willingness to criticize U.S. policy when he thinks it necessary, and he has repeatedly stated that a good alliance between two states depends on frankness and criticism from time to time.

What we see is that the party of British Unionists and nationalists has become alienated from its former federalist partners in Europe. Short of completely gutting their party’s identity, I’m not sure how the Tories were supposed to maintain the pretense that they embrace Euro-federalism. If pretending to be of like mind with Sarah Palin is painful, pretending to favor more concentration of power in Brussels when one does not would be excruciating. We are also seeing a party that prides itself on its support for the alliance with the U.S. becoming appropriately skeptical about how readily Britain should lend its support to U.S. efforts. An ally is not an automatic yes-man; a real friend does not indulge his friends in stupid, self-destructive behavior.

Perhaps the more interesting break Rachman describes is the much greater Tory interest in communitarianism and more self-sufficient communities. The influence of Philip Blond’s very interesting ideas on Cameron’s thinking is probably quite overstated, but an important difference between Britain and America is that Blond’s “Red Toryism” would cause most American conservatives to run screaming from the room even though there is not that much that is really “red” in Red Toryism. Even if one holds that “Red Toryism” is itsef incoherent and leads to adopting a grab-bag of policies, the genuine Red Tory concern for the adverse effects of state capitalism on society is important and absolutely necessary right now. Such a view is rarely tolerated in Republican circles, unless it is harnessed to another centralist initiative, and it is never seriously adopted by party leadership. What is most striking is the degree to which so-called “Red” Tories are far more supportive of the decentralization of power and wealth than their ostensibly more right-wing Republican counterparts. This disagreement may not have an impact on U.S.-U.K. relations, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Republicans started mocking a Cameron-led, Tory-governed Britain with the same insults they normally reserve for France.

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