A Fight Delayed

Britain’s Conservatives Press the Pause Button, Weekly Standard Online, October 4, 2018. "If you are looking for a disastrous performance in a starring political role, it would be hard to top British prime minister Theresa May’s turn at last year’s Conservative Party Conference. There, following the catastrophic June 2017 general election, she delivered an equally catastrophic speech, culminated in a coughing fit so severe as to be almost terminal. This year’s Party Conference, held in Birmingham, went a good deal better than that. But then, if you set your standards low enough, you’ll never be disappointed."

The Tory Fade in Birmingham

British Conservatives Are Growing Weary of Their Own Leaders, Daily Signal, October 3, 2018. "It’s almost universally accepted here that by this time next year, May will be a former prime minister. Expectations like that have a way of fading, but today, May is simply not delivering on either the substance or the style that her party demands."

The Conservative Dilemma in Britain

Are Britain’s Conservatives Dead?, Daily Signal, October 4, 2017. "A year ago—even six months ago—Britain’s Conservative Party was riding high. It had won an unexpected victory in the 2015 election. Then, in June 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union—a result that delighted most voters on the right, and quite a few on the left too. And at the start of the summer, the Conservatives looked set for a smashing, historic victory in the elections of June 2017. Well, that didn’t happen. The Conservatives won a narrow victory, but the margin was so close, and the collapse against expectations so catastrophic, that the victory felt—feels—like a loss."

A Brutal Conference

Conservative Gloom in Manchester, Weekly Standard Online, October 6, 2017. "The nicest thing you can say about this year’s conference of Britain’s Conservative party in Manchester is that at least it’s not Birmingham’s turn. Manchester may draw more lefty protesters — the 2015 conference in Britain’s second city made me feel like Aragon at Helm’s Deep, surrounded by unwashed orcs — but at least it retains some of its brickwork grandeur. Birmingham, by contrast, was heavily bombed during the war — I mean modernism’s war on humanity, not the Second World War — and no city has made the deadly results of fascination with reinforced concrete more brutally obvious."

Cheerful Conservatives in Birmingham

"The Conservatives Are Actually Happy in the United Kingdom," Weekly Standard, October 6, 2016, " in London by train from Gatwick Airport, you pass Battersea Power Station on your right. Derelict for more than 30 years, it is an iconic, vast, roofless, brick structure, with tall white smokestack towers. In the years since it last produced a watt of power, it has hosted raves, Dr. Who episodes, and James Bond movies. What it has not done is anything of enduring use. But this time, as I trundled past, there were modular apartments going up around the power station, and cranes working on the inside. The next day, the reason for the activity was announced: The power station, renovated and reconstructed at no small expense, is to be Apple's new U.K. headquarters, and a new center of retail and life besides. We were told that, after Brexit, no one would want to invest in Britain. Evidently someone forgot to tell Apple."

Tilting At Windmills

"Brexit Was A Reality Check Which Tories Must Now Implement," Yorkshire Post, October 1, 2016, "Three of Britain’s political parties have more or less given up on politics as we understand the term. They are crusaders who would rather tilt at windmills than enter the field of combat. They prefer to lose in purity than to compromise and win."

When the Tory Music Stops

Tories Count on Labour’s Looniness – For Now, National Review Online, October 9, 2015. "The annual conference of Britain’s Conservative party, which commands a slender but welcome parliamentary majority after the May elections, wrapped up on Wednesday in Manchester. If last year’s conference was an exercise in nerves and jitters, this year’s was a display of confidence — coupled with quiet grumbles from within the party, and shouts of rage from outside of it."

Insiders and Outsiders, Risks and Safety

Tory Safety First Strategy Is Not Without Its Risks, Yorkshire Post, October 7, 2015. "One striking fact is that Conservative voters in Britain appear to be the only ones in both nations who aren’t hungering for an outsider. A new poll from ConservativeHome finds that safe George Osborne is now the Tory favourite to follow safe David Cameron as Prime Minister."

I Guess I'm the Smart Money

They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, Weekly Standard, May 15, 2015. "The smart money said there was no way the Conservatives could win a majority in last Thursday’s general election in Britain. On the left, the New Statesman’s widely followed May2015 blog offered a cogent argument that there would be a blocking majority even against any repeat of the Conservative-led coalition government. On the right, columnist Matthew Parris echoed many Tories in fearing that the British people were about to make a terrible mistake. But it turns out that you hold elections because you don’t know the result in advance. On May 7, the British people returned a majority Conservative government. The smart money was wrong."

The UK Election, Featuring An Entirely Wrong Prediction

The UK’s General Election Will Be Either a Mess or a Disaster, National Review, May 7, 2015. "The recurring theme of election coverage in Britain this year has been that no one cares about the campaign. The satirical magazine Private Eye’s cover this week shows a sleeping David Cameron, with the caption “Passionate Cameron catches national mood.” Funny stuff, but wrong: The campaign has failed to move voters not because it’s been dull, but because Britain is balanced on an ideological knife edge, caught between a fading belief in a limited state and a pudgy love affair with banning, restricting, taxing, and spending. That knife-edge balance will find its reflection in today’s results."

The Election, Viewed from Brent Central

Why Britain’s Conservatives are Facing Defeat: They’re Short-Sighted, National Review, May 6, 2015. "The constituency of Brent Central, in northwest London, is a strange place. It’s new, for one thing: It was created by amalgamating and splitting several other constituencies in 2010. If the incumbent member of Parliament, Sarah Teather, had not decided to stand down, it might have stayed Liberal Democrat, which — in this election, when the Liberal Democrats are forecast to lose about half their seats — would have been an achievement for that party."

The Election, Viewed from West Bradford

A Conservative Takes on Britain’s Israel-Hating Windbag Par Excellence, National Review, May 6, 2015. "Bradford in Yorkshire doesn’t look like you’d expect it to. It’s notorious as the home of several of Britain’s worst race riots, and, since 2012, as the parliamentary constituency of George Galloway, the Soviet apologist and anti-Israel demagogue whose 1994 salute to Saddam Hussein’s “courage” marked the start of a new and more vicious phase of his career as a hater of the West. So you’d expect Bradford to be a post-industrial wasteland. Instead, it’s a city with a heart of broad, strong, Yorkshire stone and beautiful vistas over the dales. Rarely does a place look so much better than its reputation. But you know what they say about appearances."

The Election, Viewed from Darlington

In Northern England, the Tories Look to Regain a Little Lost Ground, National Review, May 5, 2015. "Darlington, a market town in County Durham in England’s northeast, is the kind of constituency that the Conservative party needs to win if it wants to form a government after the British general election this Thursday, May 7."

The Reckless Kingmaker

In Britain, Conservatives Face Defeat in ‘Crisis’ By-Election, Weekly Standard Blog, November 19, 2014. "On Thursday, English voters in the constituency of Rochester and Strood, in the country of Kent south-east of London, are likely to return Mark Reckless to Parliament as the UK Independence Party’s (UKIP) second MP. When Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron promised a month ago to throw “everything we can” at the campaign, this wasn’t the result he anticipated."

American Politics in the United Kingdom

Politics of Floating Voters Dominate the Conferences, Yorkshire Post, October 3, 2014. "This year, I attended the Conservative Party Conference, which has just concluded in Birmingham. As a historian of British politics, and as an American conservative who believes that the American and British systems are each excellent in their own way, it was not what I expected."

At the Conservative Party Conference, Cheers All the Way

In Birmingham, Shut Up and Cheer, National Review Online, October 1, 2014. "A regular complaint of British Conservatives is that the party conference is no longer what it once was. It’s not simply small to American eyes; it’s sadly diminished in British ones. There are now no motions from the floor, no debate, and little sense that the party has much interest in reflecting the views of its most active members. As one MP put it to me, the conference is now for lobbyists, corporate donors, and television. Like American political conventions, it exists to affirm the leadership, not to challenge it. Above all, it must be a success."

As Cameron Goes, So Goes (Maybe) the GOP

Britain’s Lesson for U.S. Conservatives, Newsday, October 25, 2013. "Britain is led by a coalition of two parties: the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. That may well change in 2015, after the next election. Conservatives’ difficulties in Britain offer lessons for their U.S. counterparts."

More State-Centered 'Solutions'

Two Cheers for David Cameron on Multiculturalism, BigPeace, February 10, 2011. "I am slightly less encouraged than some commentators by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech on “the doctrine of state multiculturalism.” The speech is certainly worth two cheers, and the fact that Cameron has said much of this before is no reason for him not to say it again, especially since he has never said it so clearly."

British Politics Need to Return to Traditions, Not Break Them

Something Must Be Done, Contentions, May 4, 2010. "A.A. Gill’s much-forwarded piece in the Times on Britain’s election is a delightfully readable mixture of wrong-headedness, error, and sputtering confusion, with some sensible ideas and superb acidity mixed in. There is a case to be made that the House of Commons is too big — though reducing it would only mean larger constituencies, and thus an even more tenuous connection between MPs and those constituencies. And there is an even better case to be made that, as the expenses scandal revealed, the Commons has been far too concerned with feathering its own nest. On the other hand, some of his ideas are revealing in their errors."

Cameron's Launch Speech on National Security

The Conservative Party and British National Security, Contentions, January 16, 2010. "In a major speech on Friday at Chatham House, David Cameron set out how the Conservative party would approach the issue of national security should it win the forthcoming general election. His theme was the value of connection — both domestically, with an emphasis on what Britain has to gain from better joined-up government, and abroad, emphasizing Britain’s need to see conflicts as a whole, and to respond to threats before they become crises."