“What’s wrong with your Tories?”

This was a question I heard more than once from American friends at the Democracy and Security conference in Prague last week. There isn’t an easy answer.

For some years now, the British Conservatives have been perceived by the few Americans who give a damn about them as soft on Islamist terror, treacherous on Iraq, and unreliable on Israel. Worse, the Tories are seen as fair-weather friends who are not above pandering to anti-Americanism. The staunch support for American policy since September 11 from Tony Blair has all but wiped out the memory of the Cold War era, when Tories were usually Atlanticists and Labor politicians were often crypto-Communists.

This negative impression has not improved since the Tories elected David Cameron as their leader 18 months ago. Seasoned transatlantic observers such as Irwin Stelzer, John O’Sullivan, Bob Tyrrell, and Mark Steyn have been variously dismayed by the marketing strategy pursued by Mr. Cameron, a former public relations executive. It seems designed to re-brand his party as a green-tinged, pink-edged conservative-lite club for hedge-funded metrosexuals who live in Notting Hill.

A kinder interpretation claims that the “Cameroons” are learning the same lesson that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair did from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Neither of these liberal leaders tried to reverse the conservative revolutions of the 1980s. Now the Cameron Conservatives are disputing the Blair legacy with Gordon Brown, the official heir who is due to move into Downing Street on June 27.

Critics say that so much baggage has been jettisoned that there is very little difference between Mr. Cameron’s new Conservatives and Mr. Blair’s new Labour. Supporters point to the polls, which give the Tories a small but consistent lead.

Well, this week I had an opportunity to observe David Cameron in action, at a Savoy Hotel lunch organized by the lobby group, Conservative Friends of Israel. It was a home crowd, but a testing one for Mr. Cameron. He was grilled by the op-ed editor of the London Times, Danny Finkelstein, mainly about his views on Israel, where he recently visited for the first time.

Mr. Cameron certainly knows how to work a room. He was especially adept at ingratiating himself with those guests, including your correspondent, who had been least receptive to his charms. Asked how he felt about Zionism, he replied that if the word meant that Jews had a right to their own country, “then yes, I am a Zionist.” He was also unequivocal in condemning the academic boycott of Israel — “a bunch of loons” — and the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for his anti-Semitism.

But those were cheap shots. On the Lebanon war, he defended his line that Israel’s response had been “disproportionate,” claiming that Israelis shared his view. Yet, just having been there, he must know that most Israelis are angry with the Olmert government for failing to crush Hezbollah, and that the myth of disproportionate or indiscriminate Israeli force, propagated by the hostile western press, is false.

It was the same story on Iraq. Mr. Cameron could not deny that he had voted for the invasion, but he criticized the “neoconservatives” for their “simplistic” view that military force, rather than intellectual arguments, could bring democracy and human rights to the Muslim world.

No neoconservative has ever dismissed the value of ideas — they are typically thinkers rather than doers. Either Mr. Cameron does not know what he is talking about, or he is exploiting anti-American sentiment.

Asked about President Bush, Mr. Cameron coyly replied: “I’ve never met him. But I’d like to.” This also was mendacious.

Like his predecessor, Michael Howard, this Conservative leader has been frozen out of the Bush White House, but he evidently doesn’t care, having calculated that being seen with a president who is blamed by the press for all the world’s ills would do him no good. Governor Schwarzenegger, who is coming to the next Tory conference, suits Mr. Cameron’s image-makers better.

It is another movie character, Hugh Grant in “Love Actually,” who seems to be Mr. Cameron’s role model. Mr. Grant plays the prime minister of Britain who distances himself from the American president, declaring “a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend.” Mr. Cameron repeats the formula that Britain must be “a candid friend” to both America and Israel — which, in practice, means siding with their enemies.

So here we have a Conservative who thinks the greatest threat to civilization is not jihadist terrorism but climate change; who calls himself a Zionist and an Atlanticist, but never misses a chance to criticize Israel and America; who thinks the way to get elected is to tell home truths to everyone except the voters.

This strategy is the exact opposite of the one that just allowed Nicholas Sarkozy to gain the French presidency and that looks likely to gain him a landslide parliamentary majority too. President Sarkozy has been straight with his electorate about what he stands for and what he is against, and the French have rewarded him.

Mr. Cameron could learn from Mr. Sarkozy that schmoozing is not the same as leading. A political party is not a dinner party. A polite host agrees with his guests, but a leader lays down the law. What is wrong with the Cameron Conservatives is that whatever you are for or against they just want your vote. And, in that case, why vote for them?