Will Voters Embrace the Tories' Mushy Conservatism?
The British parliamentary race is very strange. The party that consistently comes in third, Labour, may still end up with the most seats (but not enough to form a government by itself.) The party that has been shut out of power for twelve years (Conservative), but that has had the most years in governance in the last century can not seem to make the sale to a polity disaffected from Labour. A strong debate performance by Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg may put a party that has been out of power for a century in control of the government.
The Liberal party, as Michael Barone notes, governed Britain and Empire for much of the 19th century. During the Great War its run ended. A young Winston Churchill famously left the Tories and strode across the aisle to join the Liberals. I read the Strange Death of Liberal England in college. In my view it is the story of the center left being unable to hold politically or ideologically against attacks from its left.
For a century, the Liberal Party has been but a gadfly. Now it bids like one of the unfortunates in a Monty Python skit, saying “I’m not quite dead, I’m feeling rather fine, actually.” Nick Clegg, its leader, reminds me of Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont. Lamont is heir to a financier fortune who went to all the right schools. Clegg is the son of a London financier and also of illustrious ancestry. Both are green and deep into all aspects of peacenickery. In order to stop Lamontism, conservatives had to abandon a weak Republican and vote for the Democrat. The rise of Clegg and the Liberal Democrat brand he promotes is bad for America, Britain and conservatives generally.
First, it is bad for America. Some of the reasons can be found here and here. Any Atlanticist has to be concerned about Nick Clegg. We have been screaming about President Obama’s snubs of Britain and now, it is about to be reciprocated. A Britain that wants to be subordinate to the Eurocracy is not one that America will be able to count on. Britain has often led, even under Labour, in Africa and the Balkans when Europe otherwise would have taken a pass and allowed much bloodshed and instability. A retreat from that role means more headaches and responsibility for the U.S.
For conservatives it points to the danger of Cameronism. Fairly or not this is the impulse to appear “modern” by jettisoning all you believed in yesterday. It also has an association with “me tooism”, the Tories appear to want all that the Left wants only cheaper. Britain is debt ridden, unemployment is high, it has an assimilation and immigrant problem and it has a democracy deficit in that all the parties that ran on giving the British a referendum on the EU backed out of that promise after they were elected. Yet, the Conservatives have failed to seal the deal as the alternative to Labour.
Cameron’s supporters argue that “undiluted” Toryism lost four straight elections. They argue that Labour has been in power for twelve years because Britain has changed so that only a moderate Conservative party that doesn’t offend women like J.K. Rowling can be elected in Britain today. Solid conservatives like Iain Duncan Smith have simply been beaten by Blairite Labour time and time again. To these voices a call for a Conservative Party that clearly highlights its fight with the Left, is simply a call to plunge once more into the breach and wall it up with conservative political deaths.
But now is different. For most of twelve years Labour was successful. The British economy expanded under its leadership. It took a leading role in Europe in both war and peace. Tony Blair had a strong relationship with the United States and did not advocate a weak one. Blair himself was as politically nimble as Brown is lumbering. To retreat from conservative principles right when conservative predictions about Labour policies are coming true is not clever, it is foolish.
The bill is coming due on Labour policies and those who have most loudly warned about it ought to be benefitting. They should also be capitalizing on the scandals around reimbursements in Parliament, just as the 1994 Republicans capitalized on the House banking scandal. Instead the Liberals are. The British public is unhappy with radical immigration particularly of criminals and terrorists, and abuses of the asylum process. There is no reason for the Tories to lose votes to the fascistic anti-immigrant parties when a simple seriousness on curbing the worst of Labour/Liberal excesses on these issues will soak up votes that would otherwise be spent in protest. Crime is also an issue that the Liberals cannot address and Conservatives can.
The Conservatives need not bash Europe to capitalize on unease with the EU. The Conservatives could defend both democratic accountability in that institution and the worthiness of British institutions in comparison. They have failed to defend British institutions such as the House of Lords as vital to British liberty, at the same time they have abandoned a promise to call a referendum on further integration into the EU. They could also be the party of grown ups. Incredible as it may seem both Labour and the Liberals call for lowering the voting age to sixteen. The Conservatives should simply highlight some of the choice voters this would add to the rolls and watch their vote totals skyrocket. Lastly, the post-war Tory party is the traditional redoubt of military preparedness. Britain has suffered a naval humiliation at the hands of Iran that occurred under Labour’s watch and that the Liberals simply cannot criticize. An entire area of military preparedness and national security remains to be exploited in a way that Labour cannot because it has been in charge and is exhausted and the Liberals cannot because they are dovish beyond imagining.
The most likely occurrence right now is that the Conservatives are frozen out because Labour and the Liberals have more to agree upon with each other than Conservatives do with either. On both sides of the Atlantic, Clegg/Lamontism represents an unseriousness on security threats and international affairs that is highly attractive to old money educated in politically correct private schools. Greenwich, Connecticut which hosts Lamont, and Sheffield Hallam, which elects Lamont are twins. Both are wealthy, formerly conservative redoubts that have shifted with the transformation of the economic elite.
The Republican Party cannot afford to be in the position of the Tories in 2012. Their standard bearer must paint a realistic portrait of how Republican governance would differ from the Democrats. How would employment be addressed? Deficits? Immigration? The courts? And yes, health insurance. If they fail to produce a real choice for the electorate and to relentlessly focus on the Democrats' embrace of corruption and privilege for their constituencies they may find themselves frozen out of power by the soft, rich, white kids represented by Ned Lamont and Nick Clegg.