"The Michael Moore Conservatives:

Meet Britain's Anti-American Tories"

Adrian Wooldridge, Weekly Standard

There are many things that can be said against Michael Moore. An odd
combination of Howard Stern and Paul Krugman, Moore is the king of
all left-wing media, from films to books, who specializes in trashing
everything that conservative America holds dear. For Moore,
businessmen are always trampling on the faces of the poor,
Republicans are always the tools of sinister vested interests, and
America is always up to no good in the world. But say this for the
pudgy auteur, he has his uses as a timesaver at dinner parties in
hyper-partisan America. If the woman next to you admires Moore, she
probably dated Dean and is now firmly married to Kerry; if she
regards Moore as a bilious blowhard, then she is probably going to
vote for George W. Bush.Things are a bit more complicated in my native England. Take, for
instance, a lunch at a famous Conservative haunt in London's clubland
in the tense weeks before the invasion of Iraq. As a visitor from
Washington, D.C., I would normally have expected a few warm inquiries
about the health of Britain's closest ally; instead, I was subjected
to a vigorous inquisition from the assembled Tories.

A retired Foreign Office panjandrum denounced the Bush administration
for its crass ignorance of the Arab world. A curmudgeonly barrister
proclaimed his intention to march for peace. A senior banker
complained that he can't visit New York these days without being
shocked by the money-grubbing vulgarity of the place. The only person
present who didn't regard George W. Bush as a warmongering simpleton
was an American who had worked for Richard Perle in the Pentagon back
in the 1980s.

This was my first introduction to the world of Britain's Michael
Moore conservatives. Think of all the baggage that one finds in
Moore's ideological duffel bag — from his first film, the anti-GM
attack "Roger & Me," through his denunciation of the "thief in chief"
in the bestselling Stupid White Men, through last week's standing
ovation at the Cannes film festival for his latest conspiratorial
anti-Bush film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." There is the belief that American
politics is shaped by evil special interests (oil barons,
neoconservatives, evangelicals); a preference for "sophisticated"
European policies over "simpleminded" American ones; and, above all,
a loathing for George W. Bush. All of these views are commonly voiced
in the most impeccably conservative circles in London. This is not to
say that every true blue cloakroom has a stock of Moore's books,
though some do, particularly in houses with children at university
(he has sold a million copies in Britain); it is more that British
Tories have come independently to exactly the same views as Moore.

Of course, the Tory High Command remains officially Atlanticist. The
current Tory leader, Michael Howard, based his political
rehabilitation, after the disastrous John Major years, on a breakfast
club he set up called the Transatlantic Partnership. The Tories like
to claim a shared heritage with the Republicans, dating back to the
days of Ron and Margaret, and the brighter Tories, such as David
Willetts and Oliver Letwin, raid American think tanks for ideas.

But under the surface, things are changing fast. Indeed, the Tories
may have taken a subtle but decisive turn away from their traditional
allies in the Republican party. On May 20, Howard wrote a piece in
the Independent, a ferociously antiwar newspaper that is home to the
legendary Robert Fisk, attacking Tony Blair for being slavishly loyal
to Bush, and urging him to be a "candid" critic. The language was
extremely careful, as you would expect, and Howard stressed both his
party's support for the war and its ties to America; but the
Independent had no doubt about the meaning ("Howard's message to
Blair: Time to stand up to Bush"). Nor did Tory Atlanticists. Charles
Moore, a leading Thatcherite journalist, immediately attacked Howard
for making "cheap shots" and pandering to antiwar sentiment. At the
same time, the Spectator, the house journal of the British right,
published a cover story claiming that Republicans are furious with
Howard for criticizing Blair. "The White House hates Michael,"
reported one senior Tory.

If Howard has shifted against Bush — and of course he claims not to
have done so — then he is merely reflecting the views of his MPs.
George Osborne, the Tory MP for Tatton (and definitely not of the
Michael Moore persuasion), reports that John Kerry is significantly
more popular than George Bush among both Tory MPs and Tory voters.
Indeed, he thinks that Kerry would probably do better in the Tory
shires and suburbs than he would do in Labour's urban heartlands. His
fellow MPs produce a laundry list of complaints about the Texan in
the White House, ranging from his decision to withdraw from the Kyoto
treaty to his keenness on God to his general demeanor (he looks as if
he "might wail at the moon").

In general, the Tory party's position on the Iraq war is almost
identical to John Kerry's. It voted for the war after much grumbling
about "crusades" and meddling in other people's affairs. And now the
party is keen to exploit Tony Blair's embarrassments about everything
from weapons of mass destruction to the abuse of prisoners in Abu
Ghraib.

Unconvinced? Try Sir Max Hastings, a former editor of the Daily
Telegraph and, for a time, one of Mrs. Thatcher's favorite
journalists. In a recent column entitled "I hate George Bush" (at
least you can't accuse him of burying the lead), Sir Max denounced
American conservatives as "lunatics" and proclaimed that "every
single bleak forecast about their follies has been fulfilled." To
back up these arguments, Sir Max employed the full gamut of Moorist
tropes — America is a land of gun-toting religious zealots; the Bush
administration thinks that democracy can be marketed in the same way
as Enron shares, etc. — before urging his readers to pray for John
Kerry's victory in November.

MICHAEL MOORE conservatives can be found massing on both wings of the
Tory party. On the left, the "wets" (as Thatcher called them) have
always believed that Britain's destiny lies with civilized Old Europe
rather than with the land of the Big Mac. The slightly elderly lions
of this group include Ken Clarke, the bruiser whom wets regard as the
best leader the Tories never had, Michael Heseltine, the man who
brought down Thatcher, and Chris Patten, who is both the European
commissioner for foreign affairs and the vice chancellor for Oxford
University.

To a man the wets give the impression that they would be much happier
with nice internationalist John Kerry than the Toxic Texan, and they
have sniped at American foreign policy. Clarke was the only leading
Tory to oppose the Iraq war. Patten fumes about the number of
contracts in Iraq that have been awarded to Halliburton, and worries
that American foreign policy is being too influenced by supporters of
the Likud party.

The other wing of the party, the Little Englander right, is best
known for its loathing of the European Union. But it is equally rabid
about the United States, a prejudice that was kept under the surface
in the Thatcher era but is now bursting out in its full glory. The
patron saint of the Little Englanders, Enoch Powell, made no secret
of the fact that, if he was forced to choose between America and the
Soviet Union, he might have a hard job making up his mind.

The Little Englanders are the heirs of the 1930s appeasers who once
proclaimed that they would not "die for Danzig." They regard the Iraq
war as providing perfect proof of two of their most cherished
principles. The first is that American conservatism is nothing more
than neoliberalism in fancy dress. What is all this idealistic talk
about spreading democracy around the Middle East? The second is that
foreign entanglements — be they European superstates or Iraqi
expeditionary forces — are a bad thing.

Dean Godson, the chief editorial writer of the Daily Telegraph — or
"Daily Torygraph" as it is affectionately known — points out that
these prejudices are being helped by electoral dynamics. The Tory
party has increasingly been pushed back to its Little England
strongholds — the rural shires and a few of the smarter gin-and-tonic
suburbs. The average age of its party members is close to 70. These
retirees don't regard al Qaeda as a threat to Shropshire or Surbiton;
and they tend to associate America with such abominations as the Suez
crisis and Elvis Presley rather than with the spread of human rights.

It is hardly surprising that conspiracy theories of the sort that
Michael Moore peddles go down extremely well. Several Tory
backwoodsmen peers have informed the House of Lords that American
foreign policy is being run by a Likudnik cabal. John Laughland
recently wrote an article in the Spectator, headlined "I believe in
conspiracies," in which, among other things, he asked why "you are
bordering on the bonkers if you wonder about the truth behind events
like 9/11."

Indeed, when it comes to the United States, the British right and the
British left often speak with the same voice. The Daily Mail and the
Daily Mirror are at opposite ends of the political spectrum on
everything from Europe to fox hunting. But when it comes to the Bush
administration it is impossible to tell them apart. The Daily Mirror
prints John Pilger's overheated prose about the evils of American
imperialism. The Daily Mail regularly accuses America of being a
"neo-colonial bully boy," and, in a breathtaking act of hypocrisy, it
has even leapt to the defense of British Muslim detainees in
Guantanamo Bay. The Spectator is becoming as antiwar as the New
Statesman and has hired Andrew Gilligan, the man who was sacked by
the BBC for falsely accusing Tony Blair of "sexing up" a government
dossier on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, as its defense and
international editor.

Why are so many British Tories singing from Michael Moore's song
book? The obvious reason is Tony Blair. American conservatives may
regard Blair as a reincarnation of Winston Churchill, but for most
Tories he is the devil incarnate, a cultural vandal who is destroying
great British institutions, from the House of Lords to fox hunting,
in the name of nonsense such as "Cool Britannia." Tories resent Blair
for showing more backbone in dealing with America's enemies, in the
form of al Qaeda, than he showed in dealing with the IRA; some of
them are also bitter at George W. Bush for bestowing the Churchillian
mantle on a left-wing lightweight.

BUT THERE ARE DARKER REASONS for the Tories' embrace of Michael
Moorism. One is social snobbery. The Tory Old Guard was much happier
with Rockefeller Republicans, with the sort of people who were
impressed by Oxbridge colleges and London clubs. George W. Bush
represents an America where people actually believe in God, rather
than treating religion as a convenient fiction, where people believe
in business, rather than dismissing it as a rather grubby pastime,
and where people believe that gun ownership should be extended to the
masses, rather than confined to people who own grouse moors.

A second might be termed "imperial snobbery." The easiest way to get
the chaps in the golf club guffawing is to ask what it would have
been like if the Americans had ruled India. The British are convinced
that they are much better at understanding "Johnny Arab" than the
Americans. (A hint: The way to deal with Arabs is to coopt their
local leadership rather than to blather on about democracy, something
Johnny has never understood and never will.)

It is axiomatic in Tory England that the coalition's problems in the
war on terrorism would melt away if only the British were in charge
and the Americans playing second fiddle. U.S. military incompetence
is now a running joke in the British press. Unnamed officers queue up
to ridicule the Yanks for being heavy-handed in Iraq (look at the way
American troops dress up like Darth Vader while the Brits wear
berets); for not being brave enough to flush bin Laden out of the
caves of Tora Bora (which the SAS would happily have done); and for
having no idea how to police war zones (which the British learned how
to do in Northern Ireland). Americans may be good at blowing things
up; but they have no talent for the more subtle arts of war.

The last is Britain's traditional Arabism. Hostility to Israel is
restricted to a Buchananite rump in the United States; in Britain it
is widespread on the right (as on the left), with fans in the foreign
office, the business world, and the upper reaches of the Conservative
party. Middle England has thoroughly internalized the left's view of
the rights and wrongs of Israel and Palestine, a view that is
propagated daily by the BBC, the Church, the universities, and the
influential "camel corps" in the foreign office. One of the most
popular political programs in Britain is a radio show called Any
Questions? that takes selected panelists to town halls across the
country. The burghers of Tory Britain react to discussions of the
Middle East in much the same way that radical students might in the
United States. Denounce Israel as a WMD-armed rogue state and you are
guaranteed cheers and applause; defend Israel and you are booed.
Indeed, anti-Israeli sentiment is the only area where
internationalist Tories are in clear disagreement with John Kerry.

British Tories react to charges of latent anti-Semitism from
Washington with much the same fury as American conservatives do to
whispers that Bush's foreign policy is run from Tel Aviv. After all,
Michael Howard is Jewish; so is the shadow chancellor, Oliver Letwin,
and so is Michael Rifkind, who might well be foreign secretary
(again), were Howard to win the election. That would give the Tories
a considerably more Jewish leadership than the Republicans; but the
plain fact is that it would be considerably less sympathetic to
Israel not just than the Bush administration but also than Margaret
Thatcher's governments. Lady Thatcher idolized Golda Meir; it would
be hard to find Tory MPs of any religious persuasion who would want
to be seen shaking Ariel Sharon's hand.

In the end, looking for sinister motives behind the Michael Moore
Tories is something of a fool's errand for American conservatives,
because it misses the bigger point. In terms of right-wing parties,
it is American conservatism which now looks the exception, not
British conservatism. After all, the Tories' anti-Bush, anti-Sharon
views are typical of educated rightists across Europe. Rather than
being the woman who redefined British conservatism, Thatcher looks
ever more like a momentary exception. While the Republicans have
continued to move to the right, the Tories have slipped back to the
center, proclaiming their allegiance to the National Health Service
and cooling on the case for tax cuts.

One of the favorite images of Tories comes from the Second World War,
just after the fall of France; it shows a British Tommy, standing
alone on a sea-tossed crag, shaking his fist, with the caption: "Very
well, alone." If you happen to sit next door to any Michael Moore
Tories, you might well feel the same sentiment.

[Adrian Wooldridge is the Economist's Washington correspondent. He is
coauthor, with John Micklethwait, of The Right Nation: Conservative
Power in America, just published by Penguin Press.]