Conservatives in U.S. and England Find Right No Longer Makes Might

These are suddenly perplexing times for conservatives--both here and in the United States. Their ancient antagonists on the left are moving toward them in accepting limits on government’s role in society. Yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the conservative parties paradoxically find themselves in retreat.

In the United States, the Republican congressional majority is approaching disarray. Their term limits constitutional amendment crashed in the House. An effort driven by social conservatives to bar funding for international planning organizations that counsel abortion failed in both chambers. And now the putative keystone of their 1997 agenda--the balanced budget constitutional amendment--is in rubble. Though President Clinton is reeling under revelations about his campaign fund-raising, he retains the upper hand in policy debates.

In London, the picture for conservatives, like the weather, is even gloomier. After a record 18 years in power, the Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major is fraying, divided and buffeted by scandal. Despite the strongest economy in Europe (unemployment here is less than two-thirds the level in France or Germany), the Tories trail the Labor Party by as much as 18 percentage points in polls measuring voter intentions for the next parliamentary election, expected on May 1. Newspapers are now asking Tony Blair, Labor’s youthful leader, what paintings he plans to hang at 10 Downing St.

What’s gone wrong for the right? Conservative strategists are correct to pin part of their problem on success. In both countries, the political debate has shifted to the right, as Laborites and Democrats have moved toward traditionally conservative positions.

In the United States, Clinton signed legislation ending the entitlement to welfare. Now he wants to cut taxes and balance the federal budget. In England, Blair has promised not to overturn several of the signature achievements of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher--particularly in restricting the power of trade unions and putting the private sector in charge of state-owned businesses. Blair also has pledged to reform welfare, limit public spending and not raise income tax rates in his first term.

In England and America, this repositioning has denied conservatives many of the clear ideological contrasts that they used to keep the left out of power through the 1980s. In both countries, the end of the Cold War has removed another trump card for conservatives, narrowing party differences on defense.

But the right’s problems are not confined to the left’s success at occupying their ground. At least as much of the conservative difficulty is explained by their own uncertainty over where to go next.

In the United States, Republicans are still recovering from the trauma of the 1995 budget shutdown and remain unsure how much they can propose to cut from government while retaining public support. They already have ditched some of their most aggressive ideas, like eliminating the Education Department.

Here, in a country with a welfare state far more expansive than America’s, the Conservatives likewise have been drifting. Major says that he wants to shrink the size of government back toward its low point in the Thatcher era, but even key Conservative strategists acknowledge that there isn’t much public appetite for large reductions in spending--especially in social welfare programs. Since he hasn’t been able to specify extensive short-term spending cuts--and is even promising more money for education and the national health system--Major is offering only a “goal” of further tax reductions as money becomes available.

With the election approaching, Major is now trying to shake off the cobwebs. Recently, his government has put forward a cascade of hard-line measures on crime (especially juvenile crime), and a proposal to let private interests run the London subway. More boldly, Major proposed a mandatory retirement savings plan for young workers that would gradually replace the government-provided public pension--as many Republicans are urging in the United States. But even Major acknowledges that it remains unclear whether this long-term “privatization” of retirement will prove the “the big idea” that recaptures voters who believe the Tories have run out of steam.

Still, Major’s pension gambit represents a bold attempt to invigorate and unify a badly divided party--more split “than at any time [in] this century,” says Anthony King, an Essex University professor of government. Most turbulently, the Conservatives are being rocked by the growth of an anti-European defensive nationalism with echoes of Patrick J. Buchanan. Straddling the divide, Major proposes to “wait and see” whether England should join the European-wide common currency now due in 1999. But John Redwood, a leader among Tory anti-Europe forces in the House of Commons, says flatly: “This party will not accept more European integration.”

Europe is the open wound in the Conservative Party; but, much like the Republicans, the Tories also face underlying disagreements on whether to tilt further right on domestic issues in response to their opponents’ run for the center. Clinton and Blair are presenting the right with a formidable new challenge--a nuanced policy synthesis that embraces public ambivalence about government by marrying fiscal restraint with continued support for targeted activism in areas such as education, training and regulating business. In both countries, conservatives are visibly struggling to find an effective response.

Major’s modest hopes of saving his job rest on convincing swing voters that his opponent is more liberal than he has let on. But that argument didn’t work for Bob Dole last fall. And if it fails here too the Conservatives will face the same challenge that has so far stumped the GOP in Washington: devising winning contrasts against a foe determined to control the center.

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears in this space every Monday.