The Tories in Disarray

...Unfortunately for the Tories, what may have been true in the days of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher is not true in the day of William Hague, the party's new, young leader...

...Despite the fact that Lord Tebbit emphasized that he opposed neither immigration nor immigrants, many of whom share his views on the crucial role of the family and educational attainment, Hague felt compelled to issue what his spokesmen described as "a slap-down...

...Worse, he decided to throw Tory support behind a Labour move to lower the statutory age of consent for homosexuals from 18 to 16...

...And he is even better remembered for admitting that he simultaneously seduced a mother and her two daughters, to the delight of the tabloid press here...

...Although the House of Lords has no effective power against the House of Commons, it can at least make "the other place," as it calls the Commons, consider some amendments and have a rethink...

...he is also a successful politician who graduated from the policy-formulating bodies set up by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher to bring the policies that became known as Thatcherism into elective politics...

...Hague seems to have backed down after Parkinson's rebuke, but not before sending a chill down the collective spine of Tory social conservatives who fear that their leader's mad dash to modernity might bring down the institutions they so value...

...and Bill Clinton and everyone else make a scene—and it [the violence] is over for twenty years...

...The new leader of this trendier Tory party decided to cohabit with his girlfriend during the conference, to much tut-tutting from Lady Thatcher and many of the party elders...

...Hague said he believes in a multicultural, tolerant party, and hopes to recruit more blacks and Asians and, while he is in the diversity business, more single moms, married couples, gays, and young folk...

...The dispute between the traditionalists and the modernizers broke out on still another front...

...Eliminate them, and the elected majority party is free to do what it will, and instantly...

...Lord Tebbit, probably one of the most popular Tories with the grass roots of the party, made a public attack on multiculturalism...

...Unless we share standards, moral values, language, and our national heritage, we will constitute neither a society nor a nation but just a population living under the same jurisdiction...

...To a standing ovation from his audience of some 500, the former party chairman and most Thatcherite of Thatcherites (he once famously suggested that the unemployed emulate his father, and get on their bikes to find a job) told a packed room, "Youngsters of all races born here should be taught that British history is their history, or they will forever be foreigners holding British passports and this kingdom will become a Yugoslavia...

...And he has decided that his first chore is to use his skills as a former management consultant to restructure the organization...

...Labour has promised to remove the voting rights of hereditary peers in the House of Lords...

...This is, after all, the party that considers itself to be Great Britain's "natural party of government...

...One of the latter exulted, "No more Victorian morality for us Tories...

...This loose cannon used a fringe meeting question-and-answer session to put forward his own solution to the troubles in Ireland: "The only solution for dealing with the IRA is to kill 600 people in one night— let the U.N...

...Britain's Conservative party gathered beside the Irish Sea in Blackpool to lick its wounds after its electoral rout in May, and to try to persuade itself that it is now on the road to renewal and a return to power...

...Dubbed "wee Willie" by Labour—and by more Conservatives than he cares to admit—Hague has inherited a bedraggled, aging (average age of his party's members: 65), broke, and fractious party...

...That chasm remains, huge and unbridgeable, one that the party will sooner or later have to bridge if William Hague is ever to take up residence in 10 Downing Street with the woman who will soon be his wife and by then may be his grandchildren's grandmother...

...That's not the only problem that the social conservatives have with this New Age Conservative party...

...Willetts made the ritual bow to free markets that all social conservatives feel obliged to make...

...This was described as "unhelpful" by the party leadership...

...After all, the Tories were reelected in 1992 when Britain was in the midst of a recession, and defeated in 1997, when the economy was booming, the nation's unemployment rate the lowest in Europe, and inflation under control...

...You really can boil cabbage twice," Parkinson quoted one party stalwart as saying when some argued that a new face might better serve the interests of a party trying to recreate itself...

...This brought a howl of protest from Lord Cecil Parkinson (son of a railroad worker, and definitely not a hereditary peer), the safe pair of hands the Tories have persuaded to return to politics as party chairman...

...Alan, if he has nothing better to say, should just shut up," said Parkinson...

...Willetts called for the preservation of institutions that mediate between the state and the individual, and for a return to what we would call family values...

...At least one very modern observer of British social life told me that the main danger young homosexuals face in Britain is being preyed upon by older men, and so even many of the trendier Tories are not sure Hague is on the right side of this issue...

...Clark is remembered by some for his brilliant diaries, recording his days as a member of Margaret Thatcher's government...

...Wil-letts is a favorite of American think-tankers...

...Leading the charge of the thinkers is David Willetts, who has written a string of books and pamphlets that attempt to define conservatism...

...All of this had one advantage: It distracted attention from the party's continued split over possible British membership in the European Monetary Union...

...they're Conservatives because they hate the culture of the 1960s...

...This combination of events put Hague on the side of those who have no objection to couples' cohabiting without benefit of clergy, who would allow consensual homosexual sex by men not old enough to vote, who place little value on the tradition embodied in the currently structured House of Lords, and who see no threat to social cohesion from multiculturalism...

...But economics, he quickly adds, isn't everything...

...One keen observer told me that this new morality will antagonize party members: "They aren't Conservatives because they read Milton Friedman...

...The danger of a tyranny of the majority does not seem to have bothered Hague, who let it be known that he was in favor of the Labour reforms...

...Lest his modernizing leader not find this enough of a thumb in the eye, Tebbit derided management consultants, and added that he is uncomfortable "sharing a party with those who advocate sodomite marriage...

...They are, after all, "modern...

...Irwin M. Stelzer is director of regulatory policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute...

...This elevation of organization over ideology created a confrontation at the party conference—between those who see Hague's managerial strategy as the path back to power and those who think that ideas are what makes a political party successful...

...And he personifies the split between economic and social conservatives that is so much a part of the disputes on the American Right as well...

...No report on the gathering of Conservatives would be complete without relating the further doings of Alan Clark, MP for posh Kensington and Chelsea...

...After all, with a huge margin in the House of Commons, prime Minister Tony Blair can push through just about any legislation that suits him...

...There is no executive-branch veto to check his power, no written constitution against which such laws can be measured...

...But he has a problem...

...And the hereditary members are the ones not beholden to any party for their positions...

...Many Tories worry that this will remove the one constraint on majority tyranny...

...There must be more to life than mindless acts of serial consumption...