December
9, 2005
The Tories' "New" Agenda
By E.
J. Dionne Jr.
WASHINGTON -- In
democratic countries, the true mark of a politician's triumph
is not whether he transforms his own political party. It's whether
he forces the opposition to renovate itself and become tweedledum
to mimic his own success as tweedledee.
Thus did British
Prime Minister Tony Blair this week earn his place in the Politicians'
Hall of Fame. In electing the flashy, moderate, bike-riding 39-year-old
David Cameron as their leader, the opposition British Conservative
Party decided it would draw its slogan in the next election from
the venerable rock band The Who: ``Meet the new boss. Same as
the old boss."
Cameron himself underscored
his deep desire to be like Tony in his first boffo appearance
in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Cameron declared of Blair:
``He was the future once.'' The line brought down the house, and
made Cameron's essential point: If Blair won because he was fresh
and nonideological, it was time for British voters to toss out
the old model and bring in the new. But they were merely being
asked to buy a cooler, updated version of the same product.
The Tories pray that
Cameron will end their long horror show. It began when Blair was
first elected in 1997, ending 18 years of Conservative rule, most
of it under Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady disdained tweedledum
politics and joined Ronald Reagan in a political revolution on
behalf of a radical version of free market ideology. Thatcher's
was so committed to individualism that she was once moved to say:
``There is no such thing as society.''
The Conservatives
dumped Thatcher in 1990, after 11 years in power, for the amiable
and less ideological John Major. He hung on for one more election
before being routed by Blair. Since then, being a Tory has meant
living through one identity crisis after another. Conservatives
couldn't decide if they were losing because they had abandoned
the hard, pure Thatcherite faith, or because they had held on
to it with too much fervor. On some days, the conservatives tried
social tolerance, on others, immigrant-bashing. It's been a mess.
Yet Blair himself
paid his own tribute to Thatcherism. (She gets into that Hall
of Fame, too.) He junked his Labor Party's old faith in ``the
common ownership of the means of production, distribution and
exchange,'' once enshrined in the party's constitution as Clause
Four. He replaced it with a mushier commitment ``to create for
each of us the means to realize our true potential and for all
of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in
the hands of the many, not the few.'' Blair talked not about ``the
Labor Party'' but about ``New Labor,'' a brand as different from
the old as Aston Martin or Jaguar is from Vauxhall or Ford.
But he differed from
Thatcher in thinking there is such a thing as society (``community''
is a quintessentially Blairite word) and in favoring strong, albeit
modernized, social services. Blair's new balance -- less social
than the old socialism, more social than Thatcherism -- has proved
impossible to beat. And so the youthful, upper-class Cameron and
his followers, known in the British press (I'm not making this
up) as ``Cameroonians,'' decided to beat them by joining them.
In accepting his victory, Cameron promised ``social action to
ensure social justice, and a stronger society.'' Society exists
after all.
You could
almost see the ``New Conservative'' posters rolling out of the
Tory print shop. ``We will change the way we look,'' Cameron declared,
promising to give women a much larger role in the party. ``We
need to change the way we feel. No more grumbling about modern
Britain. I love this country as it is, not as it was, and I believe
our best days lie ahead. We need to change the way we think.''
A new look, a new feeling, new thinking,
a new world. Oh, and did I tell you? Cameron wants, above
all, to be new.
Blair has not yet
sued for plagiarism.
By the time the next
election rolls around in four years or so, Cameron will not be
running against Blair but, most likely, against Labor's brilliant,
slightly dour chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown. A British
friend has a sneaking feeling that Blair and Cameron may so overwork
the concept that when the election finally comes, ``new'' will
look very old indeed, and Brown could win as the newest old thing
on offer.
The Who, by the way,
had another great song titled ``Who Are You?'' When the British
Conservatives couldn't find their own answer to that question,
they decided to be Blairites -- not original, perhaps, but better
than grumbling, or losing.
©
2005, Washington Post Writers Group
