Reason Writers Around Town: Michael C. Moynihan on David Cameron at AOL News

Now that David Cameron has cobbled together a coalition government and is Britain's new prime minister, American conservatives will look for lessons in the Tory's tenuous victory. Michael C. Moynihan, writing at AOL News, agrees with Scottish historian Niall Ferguson who, commenting on the U.K.'s looming financial crisis, says that "Britain was more ready for Thatcherism in 1979 than it is today, and yet it needs it more today than it did then."

Read all about it here.

Comments

[Lou ingret]

Oh wow, that dude really makes a LOT of sense doesnt he? Wow

Lou
http://www.anon-posting.tk

[shrike]

A Tory is to the left of an American Blue Dog Democrat. The Brits did nothing out of the norm.

[&]

Arf?

[Marc]

No arf. I think shrike happens to be right.

[&]

Britain hasn't moved to the right?

[Brian E]

It only looks like that because the Brits are further along the road to serfdom than we are. Both the Tories and the Republicans share the same impotent philosophy of opposing new welfare programs while defending and entrenching existing ones. In ten years, not cutting ObamaCare will be Republican dogma.

[creech]

Already is becoming so. Local congressman - staunch opposer of Obamacare - had op-ed saying the bad parts need reforming but let's keep the good parts like mandating your 26 year old kid can stay on your policy and mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions. I'm no longer sure what he considers the bad parts.

[Attorney]

Was there a point to this article other than taking a shot at Dionne? (NTTAWWT)

[GoNavy]

"Britain was more ready for Thatcherism in 1979 than it is today, and yet it needs it more today than it did then."

I don't know about the country's finances, but the UK of today is so much better off than in 1979. I lived there at the time and I was amazed how 1950 the country was compared to the US and Canada. Christ, they were still mining coal by pick and ax in Ayrshire. I knew people that lived in flats without bathrooms and shared baths with neighbors.

I enjoyed living in Scotland, but it was not for the mod cons. Maggie took them kicking and screaming into the 1960s.

A Tory is to the left of an American Blue Dog Democrat.

While only partially true, I think this is as close as I have ever come to agreeing with you.

[Attorney]

Christ, they were still mining coal by pick and ax in Ayrshire. I knew people that lived in flats without bathrooms and shared baths with neighbors.

It's not still like that?

[Duckworth Lewis]

I think this is the biggest mis-conception americans have of the UK - thats its basically went along the same lines to widespread prosperity that the US went through - not that the UK was basically a 3rd world country until it joined the EU common market in 1969 and even then still pretty poor - some of the council estates in Scotland are still out of the early sixties in all aspects...

[Kiwi Dave]

DL-

that the UK was basically a 3rd world country until it joined the EU common market in 1969

Your history is off. For a start, Britain was the first industrialized country (heard of the industrial revolution), and achieved mass prosperity before any other country (although it did have huge wealth inequality and a persistent underclass). Depending on which data source you use, the UK had higher per capita income than the US until the 1910s. What brought Britain down was the massive cost of two world wars and an empire that had become an economic drag. It certainly fell off the pace of the North America and Western Europe in the immediate post-WWII decades, but it never came close to being "third world."

But more importantly, the EU wasn't what brought it back up to closer to the top of world economic rankings -- the 1970s were Britain's worst decade, after all (where incomes relative to the OECD bottomed out). The rise only started with the election of M. Thatcher.

Nice handle by the way. You know everyone hates you, right?

[Duckworth Lewis]

The Tories gained more seats than Thatcher did in 79 - had the Thatcher Tories had to win as many seats as Cameron's Tories they would not have a majority in the Commons and would have had to run a minority government or form a coalition.

Your lack of knowledge of the UK electoral system and history deserves the pages of AOL

[Warren]

So we finally get some outrage. That's nice?

Have any LEO's been charged with a felony? Has anyone even admitted that "mistakes were made"?

Well, at least we have outrage, that's something, for now.

[Warren]

OOPS wrong thread.
Nothing to see here. Move along.

[&]

Too late. These things last forever, you know.

[dbcooper]

If the Tories couldn't win this election ...

Cameron is not an impressive fellow unfortunately.

[dennis]

sorry for the threadjack, Tonya Craft found not guilty on all charges.

[heller]

Nice

[K.T.]

AOL is still in business?

[qwerty]

Cameron and the Tories have gone so soft that they wouldn't have pushed through any real changes even if they had a majority. With merely a plurality, they won't get anything useful accomplished. They might cave to the Liberal Democrats and create a proportional representation system, which would be a total disaster for the country. PR sounds great, until you actually try it, and then it always ends badly. Ask the French and Germans.

[ManikMonkee]

"American conservatives will look for lessons in the Tory's tenuous victory"

Looking forwards to seeing how the US media get their heads round the idea of a Liberal-Conservative coalition,

Th equivalent happens in Germany alot with Merkel's Party and the FDP, although the FDP has alot more libertarians than their UK counterparts

I reckon it could work out pretty well

[Timon19]

Not to mention how the average partisan American getting their heads around it.

[Kiwi Dave]

"although the FDP has alot more libertarians than their UK counterparts"

Ironically, the Liberal Party (forerunners to the Lib Dems) used to be deeply liberal (in the classical, libertarian sense). Unfortunately, they became gradually more and more welfarist over the course of the 20th Century, and now combine the worst of leftist social engineering and government control of the economy.