Why a Tory victory in Britain matters to American conservatism

Nobody would mistake the Cameron Tories for Tea Partiers. By the statist standards of British politics, though, their manifesto’s emphasis on localism and limited government is quite daring. The Tories may sit to the left of American conservatives on a host of issues, but Cameron is offering a more detailed and specific vision of what conservative reform might mean than almost any English-speaking politician since the Reagan-Thatcher era.

Essentially, the Tories are gambling that the fiscal crisis facing every Western government will create an opportunity for decentralization on an unprecedented scale. If that gamble succeeds, Cameron’s government will offer an example to right-of-center parties everywhere — and Britain will offer a model, in an era of tight budgets and diminished expectations, for how nations can succeed (to borrow a Cameron catchphrase) at “doing more with less.”