Cameron Doing His Best Tony Blair Imitation
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

With the exception of that sprightly octogenarian Margaret Thatcher, the only living British politician that everybody has heard of is Tony Blair. It is a measure of how profoundly Mr. Blair has transformed British politics that the hot favorite to win the Conservative leadership, David Cameron, admits that he imitates his Labor opponent – the sincerest form of flattery.
I cannot think of a precedent in British political history for the Leader of the Opposition modeling himself on the prime minister of the day. The great rivalries of the past are memorable for their personal contrasts: Pitt and Fox or Gladstone and Disraeli were not just opponents but opposites, too.
The existence of a Leader of the Opposition is one of the most obvious political differences between America and Great Britain. It is a formal constitutional position and, as anybody who has watched the weekly sparring at prime minister’s questions will know, a very demanding one, too. Because an election can be called at any time, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition may find themselves changing places at short notice.
That is why the Conservatives are making such a meal of choosing their leader. Indeed, they have been at it ever since last May, when they suffered their third electoral humiliation in a row. This week the contest gets serious, as the four remaining candidates are whittled down to two by a series of ballots of 198 Tory legislators. The last two names are then put to the party membership, and the result will not be known until December.
On Tuesday, the oldest and best-known of the four fell victim to this process of elimination. Kenneth Clarke, who has held almost every office of state apart from the premier ship, came last. Mr. Clarke is, as they say, larger-than-life, not least in girth; but he is closer in age and attitudes to Senator Kennedy than to President Bush. The Conservatives have thus spared themselves the nightmare of a leader whose views on Iraq, Europe, and many other things would have split the party beyond repair.
That leaves three candidates, one of whom will not survive today’s second ballot. The two right-wingers, David Davis and Liam Fox, won’t win over more than a handful of Mr. Clarke’s 38 supporters, so one of them will be knocked out today.
In the first round, Mr. Davis received 62 votes, compared to Mr. Cameron’s 56, while Dr. Fox came third with 42. But Mr. Davis, having started as the frontrunner, ran a lousy campaign and is visibly faltering. Dr. Fox, hitherto seen as a lightweight, may just have enough momentum to overtake Mr. Davis and contest the run-off with Mr. Cameron.
To American eyes, the issue that has so far dominated the contest will have a dreary familiarity. Has Mr. Cameron used drugs? If so, which ones and how recently? So far, Mr. Cameron has adopted the Bush defense and refused to answer questions about his private life. He claims that he “led a normal life” in his early twenties (he is now 39), which has been interpreted to mean that he experimented with cannabis. That is regarded as pardonable, but the press investigation has focused on whether he also took cocaine.
Recreational drugs such as cocaine may be considered “normal” among the fashionable Notting Hill set, to which Mr. Cameron belongs. But though it is typical of the wealthy, hedonistic lifestyle of his class and generation, it is still illegal and disapproved of by ordinary people. An old photograph of his closest political ally George Osborne, apparently taking cocaine with a woman identified as a dominatrix, surfaced in last Sunday’s tabloids.
Mr. Cameron has shown coolness under fire, and most Tories are ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. That might change if hard evidence emerges of a pattern of cavalier law-breaking. The Blair government had to back off from legalizing cannabis after a hostile reaction from the medical profession and an influential section of the press. The public is against draconian penalties for narcotic abuse, but has no desire to see a cokehead become prime minister.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cameron has plenty going for him. He has sensible views on Iraq and Europe; he has mastered Mr. Blair’s trick of seeming tough and compassionate at the same time; and he has a gorgeous wife who is pregnant with their third child. The “yummy mommy” factor gives Mr. Cameron a definite advantage over Mr. Davis, who only has grown-up children, and Dr. Fox, who is unmarried.
Just how much Mr. Blair was helped by his high-flying wife and their young family is hard to quantify, but it is more than a coincidence that in nearly two centuries, he is both the first prime minister to father a child while occupying 10 Downing Street, and is likely to have enjoyed the longest continuous tenure there.
Last week, I saw Cherie Blair in action at close quarters, at a gathering of admirers of the writer and sage G.K. Chesterton. Mrs. Blair has her faults, which are mostly characteristic of the liberal human rights lawyer that she is, but faith and family are her trump cards, and she knows how to charm an audience. She declaimed a snatch of “Lepanto,” Chesterton’s politically incorrect poem about the clash of civilizations, which went down a storm with her mainly conservative Anglo-American audience.
One of Mr. Cameron’s nicknames, “Teflon Tory,” recalls one of Mr. Blair’s, “Teflon Tony,” which was itself borrowed from the original “Teflon President,” Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Cameron has shown that dirt does not stick to him. But is his imitation of Mr. Blair just a matter of style, or also one of substance? The real question for any future Conservative leader is whether, once he hears the sound of (in Chesterton’s words) “strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,” he will know what to do and say, as Mr. Blair, Mrs. Thatcher, and Churchill did before him.