Two influential British commentators say similar things differently today about the problems the Conservatives in the U.K. have with getting their message out. In the Times, Tim Hames suggests that the party has been unable to square the circle of appealing to their base and to the center ground. There is also, he suggests, a big problem with the new big message on crime:

The final twist lies in the “broken society” theme that is being showcased. It is the wrong message completely. It does not fit with the reality of an age of mass affluence. Society might have its fractures, but to insist that it is broken is desperate hyperbole.

This is probably right. The Tories’ target voters are immunized from the crime problem, while the people who are being affected by crime are the Labour core vote, to whom no real outreach has been made.

Meanwhile, in the Telegraph, Janet Daley says that the move of Gordon Brown to the right, echoing Clinton, is the real problem, and that countering it by trying to be as “cuddly” as the left is the wrong approach:

It takes real political nerve to cut the ground from under this, but the bald facts are there for the taking. Free-market economics has delivered prosperity, self-determination (and the dignity that comes with it) to mass populations on a scale unprecedented in human history.
The requirement for moral justification should lie with those who want to suppress it rather than those who embrace it. It is collectivism – and the totalitarian, coercive, life-negating impulses that it requires – that should need tireless defending, particularly after the depths of its corruption were exposed in the 20th century.

There are tremendous lessons here for the U.S. We cannot allow ourselves to be forced onto defense about the virtues of the free enterprise system. Staying on offense will require a fresh engagement with the values of the citizen, and a principled reluctance to play the game of collectivism by regulation and spending. That’s exactly what the Tories didn’t do a decade ago. They are still trying to climb out of that trap.