At a panel discussion on the U.S. elections, some delegates actively challenged Mitt Romney’s opposition to gay marriage and his mixed messaging on abortion. More significantly, an informal show of hands revealed that only a handful of the audience hoped to see him replace Barack Obama. The perception that the Conservative party leadership also favors the current White House incumbent is so strong that the Foreign Secretary William Hague felt the need to tour TV studios and conference receptions assuring listeners that the special relationship will endure, at least from the British end, no matter who is elected on Nov. 6.

The truth is that despite headline differences on stimulus spending, in several respects, including social attitudes, many British Tories do feel more in common with Democrats than with the G.O.P. Health care is an obvious example. “This is the party of the NHS [Britain’s free-at-the-point-of-delivery National Health Service] and that’s the way it’s going to stay,” insisted Cameron from his podium. Though he aims to push through radical—and controversial—reforms to the NHS, he is pledged to maintain it. The mainstream of the British Conservative party supports a model in which health and other services are funded by taxation, even if they inveigh against “dependency culture” and bemoan inefficiences and unfairnesses. Cameron’s severely disabled son Ivan, who died aged 6 in 2009, was the beneficiary of taxpayer-funded care. As he spoke of Ivan, while lauding London’s Paralympic Games for helping people to see “the boy, not the wheelchair,” his voice broke and tears welled. It was a rare show of vulnerability from a politician more usually inclined to a patrician stiff upper lip.

After Cameron left the stage, the conference’s special guest, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg obligingly compared his host to Churchill…