Britain's Empty Conservatism

Guess whose political platform this is:

- Tax cuts? No.

- More public money for government-monopoly health care? Yes.

- Same-sex marriage? Enthusiastically yes.

- Big supermarkets? Offenders against the environment.

- Kyoto Accord. Absolutely.

- Terrorism? Close Guantanamo.

- Illegal immigration? Don't talk about it.

- Israel's response to Hezbollah's rocket attacks? Disproportionate.

- George W. Bush? No friend of ours.

Believe it or not, these are the views of the newly remodeled British Conservative party, as unveiled at their annual conference in Bournemouth last week. Party leaders justify these new positions as the necessary price of power. Aghast friends of Britain may wonder whether power bought at such a price is worth having at all.

The British Conservative party is a deeply troubled organization. It has lost three national elections in a row -- its worst performance since the days of Lord Palmerston -- each time gaining less than 35% of the national vote. In the last election, Labour's share of the vote slumped by 5.5 percentage points. Only 0.6 points of that lost vote went to the Conservatives. The other 90% went to minor parties.

How disliked are the British Conservatives? A pollster friend tells this story. He identified the three or four most popular ideas in the last Conservative manifesto. He convened a focus group and asked them what they thought of these ideas. The focus group murmured their approval. Then he told them the Conservative party advocated these ideas. Did that change their minds? Yes, it did. They decided they did not like the ideas after all.

In desperation, British Conservatives have now decided to remake their party from top to bottom. They have jettisoned their economic Thatcherism. They have ceased to talk about British sovereignty and the European Union. They have turned sharply leftward on issues from terrorism to the environment. And they have chosen a new leader who repudiates the past two decades of party policy: the handsome, articulate, youthful Cameron.

Cameron has replaced the party logo: a green tree instead of Mrs. Thatcher's blue-and-red torch of liberty. He bicycles to work and has installed a wind turbine on the roof of his London house. He cheerfully submits to the demands of tabloids for personal information about his disabled child and his own past drug experimentation.

All this is supposed to remind the public of pop-cultural icons: Princess Di above all.

Ironically, the figure David Cameron most closely resembles is one few British voters feel much affection for: the Governor George W. Bush of 1999-2000, who excited Clinton-battered Republicans with promises of a new "compassionate conservatism."

Like the early Bush's, Cameron's big ideas come concealed in a thick haze of evasive verbiage. One of Cameron's special advisors published an article in the September issue of the British magazine Prospect to explain his boss's "big idea":

"David Cameron's stress on social justice ... is not, as unsophisticated critics imagine, a leftwards shift from liberty to equality. Cameron is not proposing an extension of state power. He is proposing an extension of social power, a move in favour of the voluntary institutions--the 'social enterprises'--that exist in neighbourhoods themselves."

What does this mean? Who knows. Its incomprehensibility is its point.

Margaret Thatcher always regarded political power as a public trust. Those who sought the public's trust had an obligation to tell the public in advance and in detail how they proposed to use it.

David Cameron takes a more skeptical view of the public mind. As he seems to see it, voters are deeply emotional and seriously uninformed. They make their decision in favour of this leader or that, not based on what the leader might do, but on the basis of a warm emotional association. The first job of the politician is to win the voter's affection and, after that, to improvise.

This was exactly George W. Bush's method in 2000, and it worked for him, or close enough. Unfortunately, a politician who campaigns without a platform risks arriving in office without a mandate. Then again, that risk may not much bother the stylish young Conservative. As Cameron observed in his Bournemouth speech: "Twelve years ago, there was an energetic young party leader. He stood before his party conference for the first time. He said he'd change his party. He made promises about changing the country.

"Remember him?

"I do. And look what happened. People voted for him, but he let them down." The party leader Cameron is referring to here is of course Tony Blair. And he has learned a lesson from the current prime minister's experience. You cannot let people down, if you offer them nothing.