What The Gop Can Learn From The British Tories

Six months on from their election defeat, nobody is quite sure who leads the Republican Party. Across the Atlantic, British Conservatives have no doubt who is in charge. David Cameron has turned what should be an embarrassing scandal involving MPs’ expenses into another opportunity to demonstrate his ruthlessness, boldness, and single-minded determination to gain power. A recent poll suggests that he is on course not only to beat the ruling Labour Party – but to push them into third place.
 
Cameron’s party should be deeply implicated in the ongoing controversy that has already ended the careers of over a dozen MPs, including the Speaker of the House. Conservative MPs have made extravagant claims (using taxpayer money) for duck islands, moat clearing, and home extensions. Even Cameron himself has been accused of suspect mortgage arrangements. This improper behavior threatens to undermine his painstaking rebranding of the party, and resurrect only recently forgotten charges of Tory sleaze that engulfed the last conservative administration.
 
But just as Cameron capitalized on the hopelessly weak position of the Tories in 2005 to win support for his modernizing agenda, he has used recent developments as a pretext to reinforce his message of change, reshape the party in his own image, and re-emphasize his key theme of decentralization.
 
First, he moved quickly to channel the total contempt with which the British public views politicians in light of the widespread abuse of the expenses system. He said: “We have to acknowledge just how bad this is. The public are really angry and we have to start by saying, look, this system that we had, that we used, that we operated, that we took part in – it was wrong and we’re sorry about it.” By contrast, Gordon Brown, as the head of a 12-year old government, is unable to present himself as a credible reformer, and is temperamentally disinclined to issue meaningful apologies. It should not be lost on Republicans that the flexibility of opposition can trump the inertia of government.
 
Second, Cameron has mercilessly purged some of the worst offenders from his parliamentary party. One of his closest aides, Andrew MacKay, was forced out after claiming public money for two second homes, instead of the one constituency property outside of Westminster to which MPs are entitled. Sir Peter Viggers, who absurdly claimed for a duck island and gardening bills of around $50,000, was given a direct order to stand down.
 
This (enforced) exodus of mostly older Conservative MPs wins favorable headlines for Cameron in the short-term. But it also serves the longer-term purpose of enabling him to remove unattractive characters, such as Douglas Hogg and Nicholas and Ann Winterton, who remind voters of the Thatcher and Major years and were in any event hostile to the direction in which he is taking the party. Thus, the process of replacing inconvenient dead wood with younger, more diverse talent shifts from a problematic struggle into a political imperative.
 
This transformation of the party’s identity is widely viewed as a radical break from the past. In fact, it is a welcome return to traditionalism. British Conservatives used to think of themselves as the natural party of government. They would weep and wail if they lost power for a single term. The real question, upon which Republicans might also reflect, is not why Cameron is taking such drastic action, but why such action has taken so long to come.
 
Third, Cameron has responded to Britons’ fears (fuelled by this crisis) that they are being ruled by a remote, unaccountable and bloated political elite by repeating his calls for a “massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power.”  In a recent speech, he underlined his proposals for more local control over education, housing and criminal justice, for a more transparent, accountable and streamlined Parliament, and for a move away from the stifling constraints of the European Union – incidentally, just days before important elections for the European Parliament. He also calls for fixed terms and American-style recall powers, while continuing to crackdown on the expenditures of his own MPs.

Socialists used to talk about the redistribution of wealth. Cameron correctly perceives that politics in the 21st century, driven by globalization and technology, will be about the redistribution of power. This is what he means by “progressive conservatism.” It’s the kind of reform conservative politics, skeptical of big government but committed to non-state collective action, that McCain and Palin abjectly failed to articulate in last year’s campaign.
 
Republicans still seem strangely passive, unable to counter the Obama administration’s hyperactivity. Meanwhile, Cameron impresses the British public with equal energy in the service of a different, decentralizing philosophy. But instead of mindless attacks on “elites”, he has taken the time to accurately diagnose his country’s social problems and to suggest credible solutions, which continue to resonate as the crisis in British politics deepens.