In recent times, British and American politics have
often flowed in parallel currents. Margaret Thatcher's
election as prime minister in 1979 was followed by Ronald Reagan's election as
president in 1980. As Charles Moore's notes in his biography of Thatcher,
the two worked together, albeit with some friction, reversing the tide of
statism at home and ending the Soviet empire abroad. They seemed to establish British Conservatives
and American Republicans as their nation’s natural ruling parties. In time, Democrats and Labour responded. Bill Clinton's “New Democrat”
politics prevailed in 1992, and Tony Blair's New Labourites, adapting Clinton's
strategy, won the first of three big national landslides in 1997.
But after any party is in power for an extended period, its wingers start
to get restive — right-wing Republicans and Conservatives, left-wing Democrats
and Labourites. They complain that their
leaders failed to enact needed changes and betrayed core beliefs. They take
their party’s past electoral success for granted and push for a return to
ideological purity.....To Read More.....
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