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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The British Election and the American Right

As someone quite sympathetic to the new Tory emphasis on decentralization and localism, I partly agree with Ross that the polling surge for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives’ fading support could have very bad effects on the American right as well. Ross writes: Whatever came of its exertions in the end, a Cameron government […]

As someone quite sympathetic to the new Tory emphasis on decentralization and localism, I partly agree with Ross that the polling surge for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives’ fading support could have very bad effects on the American right as well. Ross writes:

Whatever came of its exertions in the end, a Cameron government would at least put a particular set of right-of-center ideas to the test, and produce an actual record for American right-wingers to chew over. A hung Parliament, by contrast, will just confirm all the prejudices that stateside conservatives harbor about the Tories: Not only are they all Oxbridge squishes, but their squishiness doesn’t even win elections! (I see Jonah Goldberg is already striking this note.)

There are aspects of Cameronism — statist, paternalist, and eco-utopian — that may merit this kind of dismissal. But the core of the current Tory project is an attempt to apply Tocqueville’s insights about American society to the bloated British state.

Then again, it’s not as if movement conservatives are terribly interested in decentralization and localism in the first place. Nonetheless, there are quite a few American pundits who will take some satisfaction in a poor electoral showing for “Big Society” decentralism. Movement conservatives have always seemed remarkably hostile to the ideas of Red Tories, Front Porch republicans, “crunchy” conservatives and generally anyone on the right not convinced of the boundless virtues of “creative destruction” and economies of scale.

What should also be stressed here is that the rise of the Liberal Democrats and the ongoing collapse of Tory support make clear that the Tories are operating in a remarkably inhospitable political climate. As disastrous as Labour’s tenure has been, it enjoys built-in electoral advantages that would rightly infuriate Republicans if they existed here. The Tories have had a series of leaders before Cameron convinced that hewing to Republican-like hawkishness and largely acquiescing to Blair’s egregious trampling of civil liberties were the right moves. Instead of acting like a proper opposition party on these matters, the Tories mostly enabled Blair to run roughshod over British liberties and commit Britain to a prolonged military campaign in Iraq that most people in Britain opposed all along.

It should be no surprise that the Liberal Democrats are much more of a civil libertarian and antiwar party, and this will probably help boost the Liberal share of the vote come May 6. That is ground that the Tories could have tried to occupy over the last seven years, but they never attempted it. When at least 60% of the electorate prefers the center-left and left-liberal parties, the center-right party is going to be very constrained in how radical it can be on domestic policies. In light of all these things, the “Big Society” platform for all its limitations is a fairly bold statement of some kind of guiding principle for a leader who has far too often given the impression of being bereft of substance.

Alex Massie points out that a Tory-Liberal coalition emerging out of the electoral mess might have some advantages:

And it’s not as if there isn’t plenty of common ground for the Tories and Liberals to work together on. The “Big Society”, civil liberties, decentralisation, localism, public spending restraint and so on provide plenty of room for the parties to work together, whether formally or in an informal arrangement.

Regardless of how American conservatives react to such a coalition, that could be the best outcome for the quality of British government from among the available options.

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