A few days before Christmas last year, I penned a piece for Jewcy outlining the similarities between the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, and the new British PM, Gordon Brown. The analysis was sound enough, but I trust you didn't put any money on the outcome. Hillary is dead and now merely awaiting burial, and Brown --- well, more on him in a moment. The focus has now shifted squarely onto the men who will lead the opposition into the next elections, Barack Obama and the British Tories' David Cameron.

David Cameron And BoJo: The Tory leader with the new Mayor of London: "Yes we can" elect toffs from the Bullingdon Club, Britons say Despite the real difficulty in reading across from one political system to another, commentators can't resist looking across the Atlantic and trying to divine trends that might be replicated in their own backyards. Making comparisons is usually a mugs game but, watching the progress of the two young pretenders, it's hard to avoid the similarities between them. (And keep in mind, despite the notions that the Democrats are the "left" party and Conservatives the "right" party in their respective countries, that the Tories are well to the left of the Democrats on a range of issues.) Young, charismatic and photogenic, both have turned their relative inexperience --- Cameron only entered the House of Commons in 2001 --- into positive strengths by running as outsiders against the system, a common trick in the US, where "I'll go and clean up Washington politics" is a cry as old as the hills, but more innovative over here. (David Cameron, in his own small way, is fighting against prejudice, too; doubts persist as to whether 21^st century Britain is really ready to elect a true upper-class toff as Prime Minister.)

In this regard, moreover, they have been fortunate in their enemies. After the best part of a decade as sidekicks to the men in the top jobs, both Hillary and Gordon have found it expedient to play up their experience when it suits them, and claim to have been mowing the lawn when it doesn't. So Brown built Britain's economic success, not Blair, but was careful to distance himself from the Iraq war; Hillary played a vital but unsung role in the Northern Ireland peace process, but behind the scenes she was fighting NAFTA tooth and nail, and so on. This is a fine balancing act, but the message has been spelled out time and again with shattering unsubtlety: We've been round the block more times than we care to remember, but our experience could make the difference in a time of economic crisis or national security emergency. These guys, by contrast, are just empty suits.

Both, however, have found the electorate less gullible than they had imagined. "The experience to deliver change" may have sounded cute in a strategy meeting, but voters have a reasonably cultivated nose for bullshit and saw right through it. Obama put it best when he said that "there are some in this race who actually make the argument that the more time you spend immersed in the broken politics of Washington, the more likely you are to change it. I always find this a little amusing." Cameron, too, talks incessantly of "broken politics", and of rebuilding the trust between government and governed.

Again, these are hardly the most original of tropes, but both Cameron and Obama find it much easier to talk this sort of language than their opponents, not just because they are untainted by the failures of previous generations of politicians to change the way politics works, but because they are naturals in a way that Tony and Bill were before them and that Gordon and Hillary clearly are not. Trying to attack them for lacking substance, as their enemies constantly do, is almost to miss the point. The same charge was levelled at Clinton I, Blair, Reagan and Kennedy. But all of those men had the force of personality to shape the political narrative around them and, crucially, all were running against opponents who were selling experience at a time when voters actually wanted to buy change. So when Conservative critics try to belittle David Cameron by scoffing that he is merely Tony Blair mark two, Labour fear that he might be exactly that.

Some Labour politicians are beginning to come to the view that the only way to defeat Cameron's Conservatives is to ditch the current incumbent and pick a new face unsullied by association with the past. Republicans have gone down a different route, but while their guy is hardly fresh, neither is he a standard establishment figure who represents business as usual. Whether Barack Obama's somewhat woolly charm will work against an unpredictable figure like McCain is anyone's guess, particularly given both candidates' appeal among independents. This time I'm making no predictions and keeping my money in my pocket.

Political analysts like to talk about "change elections"; 1980 and 1992 in the US, 1979 and 1997 in Britain. Both November 2008 and our own British election, whenever it comes, will be "change elections," all right. But in reality, every election is a balance between those who want change and those who do not; the laws of political entropy dictate that eventually the former will outweigh the latter. It is the joint misfortune of Hillary Clinton and Gordon Brown to be cast as establishment candidates in a time when anti-establishment feeling is running high, and that's why he will probably join her on the scrapheap before too long.

Since he took office in June, I’ve largely refrained from sharing my views on Gordon Brown - partly due to my inability to write more than two paragraphs on the man without descending into profanity, but mostly in the expectation that Jewcy readers are far too sensible to give a damn about the man, let alone his unpopularity among Brit bloggers.

Don’t worry: that expectation still stands, and I don’t intend to bore you with a long diatribe against that [redacted] Brown. But an op-ed in today’s New York Times does give me an excuse to draw a fairly broad comparison between Brown’s travails in the UK, where he languishes 10-15 points down in the polls after just six months in the job, and the growing perception that Hillary Clinton is, if not in trouble exactly, then certainly facing a challenge to her coronation that even a few weeks ago would have seemed unlikely.

Gordon Brown was Tony Blair’s heir apparent for over a decade; the partnership between the two was the driving force behind New Labour’s rise to the ascendancy in British politics, breaking the Conservative lock on government (though not, in many areas, on policy or language) and propelling Labour into an unprecedented decade of power. Despite re-electing them for a third term in 2005, voters seemed heartily sick of Tony Blair (largely though not solely due to Iraq) and so when Brown took over at the beginning of summer after being elected unopposed to the leadership of his party, the government enjoyed a significant boost in the polls.

Early crises – botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, severe flooding of large swathes of England, and the return of foot-and-mouth – tested the new PM’s mettle, and his solidity and calmness under pressure impressed many and added to his reputation as the not-Blair, the dependable, competent leader who’d rein in the showbiz excesses of the last few years and deliver prosperity, opportunity for all, blah blah blah.

That was only a few months ago, but politically it seems like a different century. Brown has lurched from catastrophe to catastrophe – most notably by allowing speculation about a snap election to monopolise the political debate for so long that when he finally announced, in the face of some challenging opinion polls, that there would be no early vote, and then compounded the error by claiming that those polls had had nothing whatever to do with his decision, he was roundly derided from all sides.

Since then his misfortunes have been almost Biblical in their scale. A scandal over sensitive information on welfare recipients going missing, including bank account numbers and children’s names and addresses, fed into the collapse of the Northern Rock mortgage lender to shatter the strongest card in Brown’s deck – that of competence. Renewed allegations of money laundering and financial impropriety by the Labour Party have attacked his reputation for probity. And stealing several opposition tax cuts mere days after they were announced made him look like an opportunist. From a position of remarkable strength as late as October, Brown now faces speculation about his position and cuts a shambolic figure.

This lengthy exposition is enough to make it obvious that any comparison between Brown and the Democratic frontrunner must of necessity be very broad-brush indeed. And yet there is a similarity, if a tentative one. Brown and Clinton are, in many ways, the ultimate insiders, having both served nearly a decade at the heart of government (albeit, in Hillary’s case, in an unelected capacity). And yet this experience, which both constantly stress, is a double-edged sword, because both now find themselves having to present their candidacies as an opportunity for “change” when it’s patently obvious to many voters that they represent nothing of the sort.

Both Gordon Brown and Hillary Clinton face challenges from young pretenders - David Cameron and Barack Obama respectively - who eschew the “safe pair of hands” approach in favour of a reliance on charisma, and use buzzwords like “optimism” and “hope” as if they actually believe them. (That’s not to say they necessarily have the policies to back up the fuzzy sentiments, naturally, but that’s not really the point.) These are the oldest moves in the playbook, of course, but up against machine politicians you play the percentages. The cosy insiders fight fire with fire, but unless they’re gifted liars their mendacity is as transparent as their smiles. Mark Penn’s suggestion last week that only Hillary has “the experience to bring about change” was a triumph of doublethink, but will it fool the electorate?

Every politician talks about standing up for the little guy against the Beltway insider, but what comes across when watching both Brown and Clinton is that, for all their talk of change, they essentially represent more of the same; not quite as slippery as Blair, rather cleverer than Bush, but not exactly Mr Smith goes to Washington. Most damagingly of all, both have gained a reputation for being calculating, choosing policy positions on the basis of partisan political considerations, and never opening their mouth until they know what the shot is.

Dour solidity and competence in troubled times are what both Brown and Clinton are counting on to win them elections, but the signs are that voters want more than that. As Rachel Sylvester writes in the Daily Telegraph, they desire inspiration as well as perspiration. And just as the early flights of pro-Brown idealism have given way to a more sober appraisal of his potential, not even the most nostalgic Democrat pretends that Hillary will be able to speak to the hopes and aspirations of the voters in the way her husband, for better or worse, found so easy.

Don’t misunderstand; the smart money has to be on the two of them winning their battles and still being around in a couple of years’ time. That’s why machine politicians infest the streets of London and Washington like a thick carpet of rats while genuinely inspirational outsiders come along but once a generation; because the rats know all the best boltholes. Both Brown and Clinton have big organisations and big bucks behind them; both are wily, experienced campaigners. Their opponents have a real mountain to climb, and a few favourable polls mean nothing in the grand scheme.

And even when the seismic shock does happen and the new broom sweeps in to “clean up politics once and for all”, the machine immediately sets to work on them, smoothes down the edges and short-circuits the more ambitious plans; and four years later they’re running as the voice of experience against some new guy who waffles on about “hope” and “change”. And the cycle begins again. Cynical? Moi?

France has just elected itself the most philo-American president since... well, since Lafayette, who never was president. And in 2009, whichever way the wind blows, Britain will find itself led by a man asking the question on every beer-warmed tongue: What bloody special relationship? James Wood:

But what would a Cameron government look like? It looks as if, like Brown's, it would retain the pound and give priority to public services. And, like Brown, Cameron speaks an essentially Thatcherite managerial language about making these public services more efficient and consumer-friendly. In a recent foreign policy speech, Cameron laid out his stall as what he calls a "liberal conservative." He would be less pro-American than Blair. (But so would Brown.) At least in tone, Cameron sounds more obviously conservative than Brown. He proposes three principles: "First, a realistic appreciation of the scale of the threat the world faces from terrorism. Second, a conviction that preemptive military action is not only an appropriate, but a necessary component of tackling the terrorist threat in the short term. And, third, a belief that, in the medium and long term, the promotion of freedom and democracy--including through regime change--is the best guarantee of our security." This certainly sounds more bullish and more traditionally Conservative than the old Labour line on foreign policy--a party once committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. But then Cameron goes on to talk about building "moral authority" and "humility," virtues he thinks Blair has lacked, and suddenly he sounds pretty much how one imagines Brown will sound. And Cameron knows perfectly well that talk about preemptive action is just talk: No British prime minister is going to support the Americans in preemptive action for a very long time. 

Blair has died, long live Blair! For whatever the prime minister does in the next year, it seems perfectly possible that Brown will lose to Cameron in 2009, and that the country will be led for several years, perhaps much longer, by Blair's natural heir, rather than the one unnaturally begot all those years ago at Granita.

Last week in England David Cameron, the leader of the Tory party, made a comment about how he wants his daughter to go to a Church of England school. This is normal, because CoE schools are generally better than their unaffiliated state counterparts. But to get into the schools you apparently have to convince someone that you’re sincere about your Church of England convictions, and when Cameron’s aides asserted that their boss goes to Church because he wants to and not purely to get his child into a good school, he got skewered by the Times, because actually believing is apparently way worse than pretending to believe so your kid can go to a good school.
Look! It's the Intersection of Church and State: Somebody call the ACLU
The anti-religious tirade that the Times unleashes, written by Michael Portillo, seems to be less concerned with Cameron’s religiosity than with Tony Blair’s, and frets, “I worry because men of power who take instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics.”

Actually, you’re wrong, douchebag. But thanks for playing.

Does one’s conscience count as an unseen force? How about data gathered secretly? I mean, I’m not Tony’s biggest fan these days, but I don’t think Tony’s problem is that, as Portillo puts it, “he takes on holiday 12th-century theological texts for poolside reading.” I think Tony’s problem is that he trusted Bush too much, and I think Bush’s problem is that he’s a douchebag and he has no idea how to do his job. Sure, his religious inclinations offend me, but not half as much as his really fucking poor leadership skills.

It’s hard for me to imagine that Portillo would be so concerned about the instructions of “unseen forces” if said forces generally agreed with him. And when he reminds Cameron, that, “Under the brief reign of Bloody Mary 300 Protestants, including bishops, were burnt at the stake for refusing to accept Catholicism,” it’s clear that he’s lost the point completely. Since when does Cameron’s willingness to attend church make him as bloodthirsty as Mary Tudor? It’s Portillo who comes off as the fanatic.

I’ll be the first person to say I want to keep religious fanaticism out of 10 Downing Street, but much as Blair can irritate me, I can’t legitimately call him a fanatic. For one thing, I don’t think he’s taking instruction from God or the Bible, I think he’s interested in it. He maybe blaming his poor choices on religion convictions now, but I don’t believe they were what motivated him to begin with. He doesn’t strike me as that pure-hearted.

But I’m straying from my point, which was that it’s unconscionable for Portillo to say that Cameron’s church-going makes him untrustworthy. As I pointed out already in my post about Abraham Lincoln, dude was a big time believer, but he also thought the Bible was wrong about slavery and made it his business to change the way a whole country understood labor. It is possible to be moral and religious.

David CameronNo one can say British don't run in the gamut in selecting their Tory leaders. They like iron in their ladies and mulch in their chefs:

Mr Cameron said that the British public "just don't respect food enough" as he vowed to take a lead on shaping a new outlook to food across Britain...

Mr Cameron presented himself as a ready-made role model as he explained how he grows his own vegetables, tries to buy "good food" and "always" cooks Sunday lunch for his family and friends.

For a minute there, I thought Cameron was being funny about his countrymen not respecting food enough.