Conservatives and conservatives
Sometimes the news broadcasts are dominated by non-news, by events that had already happened, and had been accepted as fact, but still manage to grab the headlines. Today’s ‘news’ that ex-First Lady Hillary Clinton has put herself in the running for the Democrats’ nomination for next year’s US presidential election falls into that category. This non-news, however, does raise some interesting questions for us Conservatives. For a long time, Tories have been forced to ’slot into’ the US political system by adopting the Republicans as our ideological brethren, as if their centre-right two-party system could possibly be adapted centre-left three-party system.
The problem with this is that we’re saddled by the reactionary politics of the theocratic New Right in the United States, whilst the kudos for being bosom buddies of the successful, freedom-loving, and centrist New Democrats, ideologically embodied by Hillary’s long-forgotten husband, are passed to Labour. Sure, we consequently get the support of John McCain, who has distanced himself from some of Bush’s domestic policies, but that’s the same man that is steadfastly opposed to abortion and doesn’t believe in evolution. So much for being a ‘moderate’.
From 2009, we will cease to ally ourselves to Christian Democrats in the EU, but what chance an end to our cosiness with their American equivalents? On the Republican side, there are true moderates, who wouldn’t find themselves to the ‘right’ of our party. The one name that leaps out is Rudy Giuliani: a man tough on crime, pro-free trade, true to our shared foreign policy objectives, in support of moderate gun control, typifying the social mobility policies that our party must embrace, and an honorary Knight of the British Empire to boot!
If, next year, Giuliani is elected as the next President, the Conservatives have much to gain from closely associating ourselves with his administration and his party. If, on the other hand, a Paleolithic theocrat, such as Sam Brownback or Newt Gingrich, gets the nod for the Republican nomination (and, as unlikely as it is, won), they would be highly unpopular on this side of the pond. In those circumstances, would it not be better for us to end our unquestioning support for the Republican Party, and for a rejuvenated Conservative Party to look forward to more propitious times with a rejuventated Democratic Party?
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January 28th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
You’ll find a lot of MPs who don’t believe in abortion either or all different stripes: John Reid, Ruth Kelly, IDS, Liam Fox, George Galloway, Ann Widdecombe, Peter Kilfoyle. I challenge you to find another issue that unites this group…
January 28th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
You’re confusing the issues by relying, again, on a US-style dichotomy; our political spectrum is so far removed from the United States that such a comparison is nowhere near as straight-forward as you make it out to be. When one says that an American politician is opposed to abortion (i.e. so-called ‘pro-life’, or, more aptly, anti-choice), it doesn’t mean that they favour reducing the abortion limit by a few weeks, as is the case with Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith, and John Reid. It means that they want to outlaw abortion: sometimes allowing it in cases that would save the prospective mother’s life, or when the carrying woman is a rape victim, but often refusing to approve of it in any circumstance, no matter how horrendous.
That puts many prominent Republicans firmly to the whack-job side of almost all British politicians, and certainly miles away from the liberal conservative party that we’re trying to create out of the ashes of the reactionary party that Ann Widdecombe represents. When one removes Fox, IDS, and Reid from your list, it leaves a mix of extremists that, even if they are from both sides of the spectrum, don’t belong anywhere near me, David Cameron, or our party.