Cassilis

This'll provoke some interesting responses! Iain Dale, currently in the US ahead of 'Super Tuesday' on... er, Tuesday I guess, had this to say on watching Hillary and Obama debating:

"Both Clinton and Obama would actually be classified as Conservatives if they were active in British politics. I found very little in what either of them said which the majority of Conservatives would not agree with."

There is something to what Iain's saying. There's a quote from a post-war Labour leader addressing conference following a visit to the USA (Attlee?) and I can't quite source it but he said something along the following lines - "Like us, America has a two-party system. One party is like our Conservatives and the other is the Republican Party". Even casual observers of US politics know the Democrats & the Republicans are far less ideologically defined that Labour and the Tories over here. The stringency of the current Republican administration probably obscures this a little but it's not unusual in the US for public figures to emerge as likely presidential candidates while still deciding on which of the major parties best afford them the opportunity to realise that ambition. Even a lengthy career in the service of one particular party doesn't disbar someone from switching sides if they believe the prevailing mood has changed such that they'd feel more at home on the other side of the fence - Democrats are trying to make political capital at the moment over John McCain's previous doubts about the GOP.

It's not just the party structures that are more flexible - US voters are far more tolerant of this that the UK electorate would be (one or two high profile examples like Churchill aside it usually only happens on the fringes of UK politics). The caucus \ primary system of course allows independents to pass judgement on the candidacy for parties they don't belong to. I suppose it's a feature of the personality-driven nature of presidential politics that this should be the case and given that many people bemoan the tribal nature of UK politics perhaps it's not altogether a bad thing..?

Labels: Politics