rom the standpoint of a foreign-policy conservative, Blair’s loss is a sign of weakening support for the U.S. across Europe, even in America’s most reliable ally. Blair is generally reckoned to have lost a large number of “middle-class progressive” votes (i.e., Guardian-reading, muesli-eating, electric-car-driving voters) to the Liberal Democrats because of their hostility to the Iraq war.
Blair’s Labor colleagues will draw the appropriate lesson. Britain will not soon support the U.S. in any future U.S. crisis and may gradually be absorbed by the anti-American political culture of continental Europe. And from the standpoint of a philosophical conservative, the upsurge of Liberal Democrat support in university towns in opposition to Blair's modest free-market proposal of “top-up” university fees flags the difficulty of reversing even the most indefensible free lunch offered by the welfare state.
In confusion there is profit, however, as Tony Curtis’s character says in Operation Petticoat. There are signs of conservative opportunities in the current situation — in the form of voters, issues, and readiness.
First there are a lot of voters now in play after the election results. Labor lost six percent of its 2001 vote. Many more voters — about 40 percent — did not vote at all. Some of Labor’s missing voters went to the Lib-Dems, but not all. And the Lib-Dems themselves lost some voters who finally recognized that they were a left-wing party rather than a centrist one. What has gone unnoticed is that almost eight percent of the voters — a very large percentage in the British system — chose small protest parties such as Veritas, the fascist British National party, and the eccentrically Euroskeptic UKIP. Most of these voters are right-wing in some sense or other. They might once have voted Lib-Dem but not now. And they are open to persuasion over the next few years.
Second, the upcoming issues in this parliament are likely to be conservative ones that drive people to the right — for instance, the referendum on the European constitution. Left-wing issues such as Iraq are likely to fade from the public mind. And the biggest issue of all will be the fiscal crises against which the IMF warned during the campaign. Whether Blair or Brown is prime minister, the government will be unable to finance large injections of public money into failing public services from “stealth” taxes that nobody notices. On the contrary, massive bills for previous expenditures and regulatory costs will become due shortly. So Labor will either have to raise taxes sharply or cut back on spending, and in either event they will have to bring serious market reforms into health and other public services.
However such choices go, they would tend to split Labor, antagonize the Lib-Dems, and benefit the Tories. And in all cases they will clarify political choices for the voters in a way that New Labor has confused them.
Third, the Tories are more ready than any other party to take advantage of these two opportunities. Their vote rose, albeit only slightly, rather than fell. They fought a hard-hitting and focused campaign that won back some of their core. (Australian Lynton Crosby earned his fee and then some.) The issues they emphasized, notably immigration, are those likely to win over the voters newly in play.
The world is more than willing to look the other way to dictators and genocide. You'd think Europe would have learned their lessons after World War II.
What have you done for me lately?
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