In this winter of conservative discontent, Britain's Tories present a tempting alternative. What would happen if Republicans, following their example, rejected market economics and championed social welfare? Could they win again? It's a thought-experiment that's come alive in Britain in recent years. Thatcherism has been happily shed, and David Cameron's Tories, no longer "the nasty party," are in the throes of a great courtship of the public. Victory in the next election is likely. Naturally, the revival has captured attention stateside, where some conservatives are spreading similar ideas.
Much ballyhooed is the communitarian turn in Tory thinking. Cameron's army of gentle toffs invoke words like "family," "neighborhood," and "community." Whereas under Thatcher they had always defended the individual against the state, now Tories give greater priority to these constituent social units. In practice, this means moving beyond traditional obsessions with Europe, tax cuts, and private health care and focusing instead on policies like paternity leave, environmentalism, and road safety. The broad idea is to align Tories belatedly with the mixed economy, or the "third way," while tainting Labour as well-meaning but bungling statist bureaucrats.
It's a shift that caused a near civil war within the Tory party. Old Thatcher stalwarts never really accepted the transformation, and the rift has been complicated and sometimes bitter. Cameron himself has had a difficult public relationship with Thatcher, and has made bold statements like, "There [actually] is such a thing as society," and, in a recent discussion of tax cuts before an audience of businessmen, "There's more to life than money." Partly as a result of these moves, he was not invited to Thatcher's 80th birthday party in 2005, though as Cameron has gained in success, relations have improved. Today's Conservative party maintains the fiction of a formal ideological unity. Yet it's difficult not to acknowledge the reality: Thatcherism has been dead for some time now, and the conservatives have killed it.
Could something similar happen to the Republican party? From today's vantage point, the answer is--happily--no. If nothing else, the vast infrastructure of free-market think-tanks combined with the firepower of the Wall Street Journal editorial page will prevent classical liberalism from being written out of the Republican coalition. Moreover, where Britons have long agreed on the state's commitment to social welfare, the contours of this commitment are still up for major debate in the United States. To imagine a Republican candidate declaring, as Cameron did in 2006, that "trickle-down economics is not working" is implausible, not least because, in the United States, that's a kind of rhetoric strongly associated with Democrats.
But perhaps the more important reason a transformation along Tory lines is unlikely here is that the new British communitarianism is largely a response to Muslim immigration, a burning cultural issue with little parallel in the United States. (Hispanic immigration fires some passions, but not enough to command the mainstream.) This political era in Britain began with the 2005 London underground bombings and has quickly made immigration the unstated premise of British politics, underlying the rhetoric of both sides.
It's evident when David Cameron argues for limiting the number of immigrants and urges a revival of "community cohesion," and it's there when Labour prime minister Gordon Brown calls for a "shared national purpose" while suggesting that migrants "should be able to speak the English language." Less conspicuously, Civitas--the think tank of a prominent Cameron adviser, which published "On Friendship," the major formulation of Tory communitarianism--often publishes on topics like honor killings, political correctness, and British identity. Not only is immigration the elephant in the room of British politics, but its presence is felt across the political spectrum.
Anecdotes, however, don't convey the sheer scale of the transformation, which is best seen on the level of policy. When Britain completely revamped its immigration laws last year, it moved to a system that welcomes high-income, skilled workers while restricting entry of low-income, unskilled workers. This wasn't an accident. The poorest immigrants in Britain are often Muslims, and the immigration minister who unveiled the new policy acknowledged that mass immigration had left the country "deeply unsettled," insisting, somewhat defensively, that it wasn't "racist for Labour to debate" it. Meanwhile, the new immigration minister has proposed a cap on the number of immigrants, a daringly conservative idea for a Labour government. "Community cohesion is crucial," he announced. "After the economy, this is probably the biggest concern facing the population."
Other reforms reflect this theme. The emphasis is on "earning citizenship" rather than simply obtaining it. English proficiency is compulsory. Immigrants who integrate (by doing community service, for example) are given shorter naturalization times. The average age for a marriage visa has been raised to 21 from 18 in order to "crack down on forced marriage," as a press release puts it.
The changes continue: Starting in December, some foreigners living in Britain had to begin carrying ID cards, with full coverage expected by 2015. Foreigners convicted of minor offenses not only receive the requisite punishment, but also see their welfare benefits suspended. Not to mention that a "Britain Day"--a development of some comedic potential--was on the cards until a few months ago. With Britons clearly anxious about integration and citizenship, it's easy to see how Tory communitarianism, with its call for a revival of civic life and trust, could become so popular.
There are other reasons why recent Tory successes are untranslatable to the United States--the bumbling specter of Gordon Brown, for one--but ultimately, they point to the broad conclusion that successful ideologies must emerge from local passions. Tory thinking cannot be grafted onto Republican strategy in the United States because it is a response to concerns Americans do not have.
Sahil Mahtani is a reporter-researcher at the New Republic .