Opinion: Oh to be in England

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I first visited England nearly 40 years ago on a school tour and have been back about 30 times since then, once for a year as a ‘visiting student’ at a British university. I would describe myself as a low-church Anglophile, enamored of England but not one of those wannabes who pepper their speech with Britishisms (‘Where’s the loo?’) and mentally bow or curtsey before the Queen. I admit to being comforted by the ways in which England and America are still separated by a common language, but I also try to keep track of change and convergence.

Last month, on the way to a seminar at the University of Cambridge, I played sherpa to my 17-year-old nephew Dan Hanson on his first visit to Britain. The most dramatic change I observed was the increase in the number of Islamic women in London who were wearing veils that provided various degrees of concealment. This was an impressionistic finding, but an accurate one, I think. As in France, the preference of some Islamic women for the veil has become a metaphor for the debate over Muslim assimilation. Two years ago a member of Tony Blair’s Cabinet provoked protests when he said that he asked Muslim women visiting his local constituency office to remove veils that concealed all but their eyes.

My second observation – and not only mine – was the way British and American politics are converging in exalting the cult of personality. For years it was an axiom that the American system, in which the president is both head of state and head of government, put a higher premium on a politician’s personal qualities than the British system, where the monarch is head of state and the prime minister in theory is only one of her advisers. But, thanks to Tony Blair, the tradition of charisma-challenged prime ministers may be coming to an end.

During my recent visit to England, the newspapers were full of speculation that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the dour Scot who succeeded Blair as leader of the Labor Party, was about to be forced out in favor of his younger foreign secretary, David Miliband. Brown’s shaky position can be attributed to a litany of political missteps and Labor’s loss in a key midterm parliamentary election in Glasgow. But at least as important is Brown’s charisma gap. Unlike Blair, who was possessed of a Clintonion glibness, Brown seems awkward in his public utterances and less touchy-feely than David Cameron, the young leader of the Conservative Opposition. While journalists were sitting a (political) death watch for Brown, Cameron appeared in the press in the unlikely role of the victim of a bicycle theft. Although he is an upper-class ‘toff,’ Cameron exudes American-style approachability.

It would be ironic if the ‘presidentialization’ of British politics by Tony Blair was the undoing of his chosen successor.

The photo of Gordon Brown came from EPA/Lee Sanders, and the Miliband snap was by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.