If you like to believe that no bad deed goes unpunished, don’t look at the British opinion polls. In its nearly 13 years in power, the United Kingdom’s Labour party has wrecked the economy, ruined the national finances, lost control over the country’s borders -- and that’s just the beginning of the rap sheet. Labour is overbearing, sleazy, and skilled only in the arts of political survival. Selfish, self-absorbed, and feuding, it is now led by Gordon Brown, a Queeg-like character for whom the kindest adjective would be “troubled.” Despite all this, there is a chance that Brown may win a renewed mandate as prime minister in the general election that has to be held no later than June. Even new allegations -- “Bullygate” -- about the way he treats his staff do not appear to have damaged him at all.

The peculiarities of the British electoral system mean that if the Conservatives are to secure a solid majority in the House of Commons, they don’t just have to win; they have to win big. For much of last year, that’s just what the polls, sometimes showing a Conservative lead over Labour in excess of 20 percentage points, predicted the Tories would do. In the last month or so, the picture has darkened. The Conservative edge has dwindled to the mid-single digits, a range that would not be enough to give them an absolute majority. A poll released over the weekend recorded a Tory advantage of only 2 percent, a showing that implies that Labour will form the next government.

The best bet continues to be that Conservative leader David Cameron will still make it, but this trend has now lasted long enough to trigger jitters within his party. It’s also contributing to renewed weakness of the battered British pound. Expect more of the same. Investors won’t relish the thought of five more years of Labour.

The usual explanation for their stumble is that the Conservatives “do not stand for anything.” That perception is the inevitable consequence of two of Cameron’s more difficult challenges. The first reflects the fact that the hole into which Labour has dropped the economy is also a trap for the Tories. With a budget deficit of around 12.6 percent of GDP this year, a spiraling public-debt/GDP ratio, and financial markets increasingly twitchy, the incoming government will have to hack back public spending. Labour knows this. The Conservatives know this.

Cameron’s problem is that the boost the economy has received from emergency measures taken since the financial meltdown in 2008 has allowed many Britons to fool themselves that the situation isn’t quite as terrible as all that. For now, Labour can pretend that muddling through with a trim here and a snip there is a viable alternative to a more drastic austerity program.

To agree that muddling through might work is not a sensible approach for an opposition to take when it is resting a good part of its case on Labour’s mismanagement of the economy. At the same time, being the bearer of bad tidings is a notoriously risky assignment, particularly in this context, for the Conservatives, a party still tarred with the brush of the wildly exaggerated “Thatcher cuts” of the 1980s. That’s one of the reasons that Cameron has taken such pains to say that he will maintain spending on the National Health Service (NHS), a claim that undermines much of his credibility as the man who can restore order to the United Kingdom’s finances.



The pledge to defend the NHS is, however, about more than budgets. It’s also a part of Cameron’s continuing effort to “decontaminate” the Tory brand since becoming leader in 2005. After three consecutive election defeats, the Conservatives were desperate. Years of clever smears by Labour, skillfully aided and abetted by much of the media, had left the Tories labeled as the “nasty party” for whom only the aged, the out-of-touch, the racist, or the reactionary would vote.

To shatter that image, Cameron, a man with, tellingly, a background in public relations, had to tackle the hatred felt for his party among much of the media and cultural elite. That hatred was often contrived, a matter of fashion or careerism as much as ideological conviction. But its consequences were real and, given the top-down manner in which British political debate is shaped, they were devastating. The candidacies of the three Tory leaders between John Major (the Conservative prime minister defeated in 1997) and David Cameron were destroyed almost before they began. Cameron had to avoid the same fate.

He did so the old-fashioned way: He surrendered. In effect, he accepted that the caricature was true and then embarked on a series of policy and presentational shifts designed to show that the party had been transformed into something housetrained, something more respectable, something inclusive. Not all these changes were bad. More important, they have worked. The media and cultural elite still trend firmly left, but some of the old vitriol has gone, diluted further by economic collapse and Labour misrule. The Tories can now get the hearing they need if they are to get their message out.

The only problem is: What will that message be? If topics such as “Europe,” mass immigration, health-care reform, rising social disorder, and the failures of multiculturalism were all to be downplayed, what exactly were the Conservatives supposed to be “about”? Harping on about low taxes was thought to look greedy. There was always the economy, but explaining how the Conservatives would do better with that was something of a struggle at a time when the economy appeared to be faring just fine. So Cameron focused on happy talk about sharing the proceeds of growth and saying things like this (from a 2006 speech):

GDP. Gross Domestic Product. Yes, it’s vital. It measures the wealth of our society. But it hardly tells the whole story. Wealth is about so much more than pounds, or euros or dollars, can ever measure. It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time that we focused on not just on GDP, but GWB -- General well-being.

Oh dear. The best thing to be said about remarks such as those was that they dovetailed nicely with Cameron’s big new theme: environmentalism. That was a theme that came with good ideas and bad, but it undoubtedly played a useful part in creating the kinder, gentler reputation without which the Tories would now have no chance of winning.

To be fair, the message has lately been toughened up a touch. The reluctance to confront the ugly reality of social disorder has been replaced by a focus on “broken Britain.” An innovative education-reform agenda has been put in place. Labour’s betrayal of the armed forces has come under fire. It’s a start, but the electoral strategy that has characterized Cameron’s time at the helm has forced the party into a place where its pitch makes for a pretty thin gruel. The Conservatives are primarily defined by what they are not, rather than by what they are. They are not the nasty party. They are not Labour. Given what Labour has done to the country, that ought to have been enough, but it isn’t.

Part of the problem is the absence of any popular enthusiasm for the Cameron project. In the place where you would most expect to find it -- among the wider party faithful and their fellow travelers on the right -- it’s as notable by its absence as its presence. These voters would be delighted to see the back of Brown, but they do not appear very excited by the prospect of a Cameron victory. They were never going to enjoy the Tory leader’s left turn, but their doubts about him have been reinforced by a series of recent moves that suggest that this shift is a matter of conviction as much as political calculation. The latter might be forgivable, the former not so much.

In this connection, it is interesting to see that the Conservative lead started to narrow shortly after the Tories reneged on a pledge to hold a referendum on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty in the event that they were to be elected. It’s possible -- just -- to defend that decision (the treaty had since passed into law, and it would take more than a British rejection to unwind it), but the same cannot be said of the Tory leadership’s attempt to use women-only shortlists to force local Conservative parties to pick female parliamentary candidates, or its refusal to recognize that the politics of global warming have shifted in the wake of the various Climategates. Then there was the spectacle of Ken Clarke, the most Europhile senior Tory, being dispatched to meet with EU high-ups in Brussels. Well, you get the picture.

And while Cameron’s achievement in increasing his party’s appeal to more centrist voters is real enough, the support he is winning among them looks shallow, tentative, and somewhat grudging. The Conservatives may be running on a platform of “change” (yes, yes, I know), but there is none of the groundswell usually seen ahead of elections in which that is what voters actually choose. That may be because they don’t really want it or, such is the paradox of the positions that Cameron has taken in the name of making his party “electable,” it may be because they think that all the Tories offer is less of the same.

Either way, in the absence of a complete financial collapse between now and voting day, this is shaping up to be a good election for “none of the above.” And that’ll be a bad election for Britain.

-- Andrew Stuttaford is a contributing editor of National Review Online.

When the Air Force chaplain’s office rescinded its invitation to Tony Perkins to keynote a military families’ prayer luncheon, it should have been over something truly dreadful. Disinvitation is serious business; usually, once an offer has been made and accepted, hospitality is supposed to kick in.

So what did Perkins, a former Marine officer and president of the Family Research Council, do to offend the Air Force chaplaincy? He wrote on his organization’s website that he opposes Pres. Barack Obama’s intention to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In the words of a written statement from the authorities at Andrews, Perkins’s invitation was retracted “after his recent public comments made many who planned to attend the event uncomfortable.” The chaplain’s office “wanted the luncheon to be inclusive for the entire base community.”

Those who were distressed by Perkins’s opinion still work for a military that does not allow homosexuals to serve openly, a reality beside which Perkins’s mere comments really ought to pale. All Perkins did was express his support for what is still, despite the president’s opposition, the law, which is not such a strange thing for a former military man to do.

Indeed, the week of the Perkins-less prayer luncheon, several current military men expressed the same opinion. Air Force chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told the House Armed Services Committee that “this is not the time to perturb the force, which is at the moment stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, without careful deliberation.” His Army counterpart, Gen. George Casey, said he had “serious concerns” about a repeal. (Both were invited back onto their bases after testifying.)

And it isn’t as though Perkins had been scheduled to speak about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The theme of his convocation -- which was put on the books way back in October 2009 -- was “Back to Basics.” The event was devotional, not political. “I would have never used this venue as a political venue to even mention the president,” Perkins said, “unless it was to pray for him.”

Air Force chaplain Lt. Col. Gary Bertsch made one good point -- exactly one -- which was: “As military members, we are sworn to support our commander-in-chief, and are forbidden to make or support statements which run counter to our roles in the armed forces.”

It’s true enough that military men owe deference to their commander-in-chief and shouldn’t be noisy about points of disagreement with him. But the president has invited debate on gays in the military. Congress has called on high-ranking men to give their honest and expert opinions. Perkins heads an organization that specializes in family issues. Of course he would weigh in.



The chaplain’s argument seems even odder when you consider the press release that got Perkins in trouble. The day after President Obama’s State of the Union address, Perkins posted a response to the FRC website that included this line: “The sexual environment the President is seeking to impose upon the young men and women who serve this country is the antithesis of the successful warfighting culture and as such should be rejected.” Not exactly flamethrower language. The release then went on to discuss various other topics, such as child-care tax credits.

Perkins doesn’t personify opposition to gays in the military, and the FRC isn’t a single-issue shop dedicated to thwarting gay rights. If the chaplain hadn’t made an issue of the FRC’s opposition to this particular White House agendum, the prayer luncheon probably would have come and gone without incident.

When a respected national figure like Tony Perkins starts seeing prayer-luncheon engagements canceled over a position rooted in Christian orthodoxy, it’s time to make sure our religious liberty is still in the last place we left it. The chaplain’s office would never say that a guest of the base may not believe as Perkins does, of course, but it does seem to be suggesting that its guests keep that opinion to themselves. Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Ga.) suspects that this chilling effect is exactly what Perkins’s critics had in mind. “They knew there would be a backlash to this, and I think they had a design about that.” The incident wasn’t about Perkins, he thinks, but about “using him to drive a message -- that your brand of sermon is no longer welcome in the U.S. military.”

Whether the Air Force meant to send it or not, the message is clear enough. If this is where the policy stands now, imagine how strict things will become if “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed.

-- Helen Rittelmeyer is an associate editor of National Review.

Make no mistake: If Barack Obama actually wanted to be the post-partisan agent of change in Washington, his health-care summit would have looked a whole lot different from the meeting at the Blair House, across the street from the White House. Every Republican from Majority Leader John Boehner to maverick John McCain (the latter is being challenged from the right in an upcoming primary, by the way) walked into the meeting imploring the White House to start over, to begin again, to hit the reset button. If the president wanted to meet them half-way, or any of the way, he would have done just that.

Instead the president continues to argue -- aided in the media by folks ranging from practically everyone on MSNBC to Bill O’Reilly of the supposedly all-right-wing Fox News Channel -- that the American people just don’t understand what his health-care plan is all about. In one sense I agree with him. Given the fact that even the Congressional Budget Office said it didn’t have enough details to do a proper score of the latest version of the legislation in time for the official summit, the man has a point. But it’s not voters’ slowness with the issues; it’s the White House’s.

If the president were serious about being a different kind of leader, he would have had governors at the White House summit on health care, as Republican governors requested.

He would have considered what Republicans had to say instead of dismissing criticism as he has been doing for the better part of a year in this and other debates. One of the best lines of the summit was “If you’re waiting for Mitch McConnell to roll in here a wheelbarrow full of a 2,700-page comprehensive health-care bill, that’s not going to happen.” Sen. Lamar Alexander continued, “We’ve watched the comprehensive, economy-wide cap-and-trade. We’ve watched the comprehensive immigration bill#...#we’ve watched the comprehensive health-care bill. And they fall of their own weight.”

That’s a message that Washington can afford to hear. That’s a message that gets back to constitutional principles of federalism. And, frankly, that’s a manageable message.

As Paul Ryan, a congressman from Wisconsin whose attention to detail is such that even the president has trouble dismissing him, explained at the summit, there are, in fact, real differences between the Republican and Democratic positions on health care in Washington. “We don’t really believe the government should be in control of all this,” Ryan said. Pointing to what he and others have been hearing from Americans -- in town halls since the summer and, most recently, in the Massachusetts special election -- Ryan said to the president, “I would respectfully submit: You’re not listening to them.”



Not listening isn’t exactly the “hope and change” people signed up for. It is hardly a new kind of leadership for him to rub in a year-old election victory when asked a question by the senior senator from Arizona at a forum he is hosting. It’s petty snippiness. It’s bullying. It’s a game of point-scoring of the kind he claims to be above and repulsed by.

The president of the United States is a liberal ideologue who isn’t comfortable telling you as much, so he ridicules those who try to highlight the truth. Without a penchant for honesty, it’s just about all he’s left with.

On perhaps no issue is his dishonesty more obvious than on abortion. And it’s been so with Barack Obama since before he was ever inaugurated. During the 2008 campaign, he outright lied about his position and accused those who talked about his record in the Illinois statehouse of being liars. He continues to do just that. Late last year he audaciously accused the Catholic bishops of the United States -- as well as others who criticized various versions of health-care legislation for their abortion funding -- of “bearing false witness.” And, after refusing to invite pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak to the summit, the president simply ignored the issue when John Boehner brought up the abortion question. He apparently didn’t believe that an issue that threatens the consciences of millions of Americans deserved a simple explanation from the White House. And, flanked by two “pro-choice Catholics,” the president was happy to let Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi state the dishonest talking-point -- that what was being discussed would not fund abortion -- on his behalf.

A Quinnipiac poll last year found that 72 percent of voters oppose federal funding of abortion. A recent poll from CBS -- just to pick one non-right-wing entity -- found that half those surveyed don’t approve of the president’s job on health care.

There’s something to what Paul Ryan said, and Barack Obama must know it; otherwise, he wouldn’t be trying so hard to dismiss objections and gloss over what he’s doing. His options right now are to force some plan through Congress or to walk away and blame the “Party of No” for killing his health-care hopes. But his own health-care summit is already on YouTube and provides ample fodder to counter that “Party of No” accusation. His opposition proved themselves anything but the troglytes Hardball would have them portrayed as.

And if he does manage to get enough Democrats to go along with his politically suicidal gambit, good luck, Mr. President, coming up with an explanation when your impractical plan doesn’t become the panacea it was supposed to be -- that you insisted we weren’t smart enough to understand it to be. The proof will be in the reality. At some point, your misinformation campaign will get tired, tiresome, and tossed out.

I, for one, though, am hoping your own party forces a change of course. We can’t afford your way, in more ways than one.

-- Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com.