A question: Which British political party is now showing a cinema advertisement that depicts Tony Blair receiving a pat on the back from George W. Bush, accompanied by a hostile commentary describing the prime minister as the president’s “poodle?”

Surely, this must be the work of a leftist, anti-war, anti-American fringe party such as Respect, the fan club of the former Labor politician “Gorgeous” George Galloway, whose association with Saddam Hussein is notorious? No, this is the propaganda of the Conservative Party, the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

Rather than defending Atlanticism against the left, as they have done since World War II, the Tories now sound more like continental European conservatives such as Jacques Chirac. The French president indulged in another anti-American tirade last week, in a desperate attempt to swing the French electorate back in favor of the European constitution, on which it will decide in a referendum on May 29. Because the French heartily detest les Anglais as much as les Americains, Mr. Chirac tends to use the term “Anglo-Saxon” to embrace both the Atlantic powers whenever he pooh-poohs the free market. So British reactionaries can’t make common cause with him against America. But for that, Mr. Chirac would speak not only for French Gaullists, but for plenty of British Tories, too.

Elections bring out the worst in politicians, and the Darwinian struggle for survival of the slickest always reveals more than they intend. The first fortnight of the British election campaign has certainly exposed both the naked will to power and the tawdry little hypocrisies of Mr. Blair and his Conservative opponent, Michael Howard.

First, we have had the spectacle of Mr. Blair presenting himself in unctuously convivial TV ads and road shows with his bitterest rival, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. The message is that, since taking office eight years ago, Labor has created a “progressive consensus,” which will be safe whenever Mr. Blair decides to pass the baton to Mr. Brown. Voters are supposed to see this dubious double act either as a shopping-mall offer (“buy one, get one free”) or as a “smooth transition.” So Mr. Blair introduced his manifesto by announcing that this would be his last election as Labor leader, though he also insisted he would serve a “full term” of at least four years.

Never before have the British people been asked to vote for a party without the least idea who will occupy 10 Downing Street in a year’s time. The electors are given to understand that it doesn’t really matter who is prime minister, because both men are “New Labor.” In fact, they are poles apart in politics and personality: Mr. Blair is happy to look and sound like a conservative, Mr. Brown is proud to be a socialist; Mr. Blair is an extrovert, Mr. Brown an introvert, etc. But this pretense is the price that Mr. Blair is paying for support from Mr. Brown, who has spent years sulking in his tent while Mr. Blair received the credit that Mr. Brown thinks properly belongs to him. Mr. Brown at 54 is actually the elder of the two and nurses a grudge against Mr. Blair, only 51, for not having handed over power long ago.

Meanwhile, the Tories have been trying to exploit the most dramatic event of the campaign so far, the conclusion of three linked terrorist trials of 11 North Africans accused of conspiring to use ricin and other poisons to spread panic in London. This was a major Al Qaeda plot, which could have caused death and disruption to compare with September 11 or Madrid. The only defendant to be convicted was an Algerian, known as Kamel Bourgass, who stabbed a policeman to death. The rest were acquitted or their charges were dropped because much of the evidence against them proved to be inadmissible in court, because of unsubstantiated claims that it had been extracted in Algeria under torture.

The Tories have seized on the fact that several of the accused, including Bourgass, were asylum-seekers who had been refused permission to stay in Britain, but had then gone underground or simply ignored the authorities, who made no attempt to deport them. The government’s lax asylum and immigration policy – one of the main Conservative targets – is blamed for a serious breach of security.

The trouble with this line of attack, which undoubtedly has some truth in it, is that the Tories have such a poor record supporting tough measures to resist terrorism. The Tories opposed the new Prevention of Terrorism Act, which created “control orders” that are the only means by which the police can deprive terrorist suspects of any opportunity to wreak havoc short of putting them on trial. The Tories opposed the biometric identity cards that the police say would help them to identify shadowy figures like Bourgass. And though the Tories voted to invade Iraq, they now claim that Mr. Blair took the country to war on the basis of a lie and try to capitalize on every setback on the road to democracy.

From Tory lips, patriotism right now sounds like a weasel word – the last refuge, in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s words, of a scoundrel. So it is no surprise that public opinion has been singularly unimpressed. Present predictions give Mr. Blair a reduced but still huge majority of 70 to 100 seats.