Alex Massie Alex Massie

Provocation of the Day

Andrew Sullivan issues it:

Obama reminds me of a one-nation Tory, refitted for the austerity era. David Cameron would fit very easily into his cabinet, and vice-versa.

I fancy some of this magazine’s readers, to say nothing of less literate parts, headbangers True Believers elsewhere on the Tory right, worry Andrew may be right about this.

I’m not so sure. I think Cameron’s instincts are very different from Obama’s but that each has been forced to compromise by unyielding events. If, by some chance, they had been in power 15 years ago I suspect their similarities, such as they are, would have seemed relatively trivial compared to their differences. Nevertheless, the times being what they are both men have seen their preferences clipped by reality to the extent that, thanks to grim circumstance, it’s possible to see them converging on some middle-ground, albeit from opposite directions.

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