Britain's Beloved Welfare State
Conservative Party Backs Policies Considered Liberal in U.S.
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 29, 2001; Page A10
EDGBASTON, England -- William Hague says government must provide free
cradle-to-grave health care for all. He backs a ban on handguns. He
endorses the right to abortion on demand. He supports a monthly
handout to every family with children and education subsidies that pay
about 95 percent of every college student's tuition.
It's a policy portfolio that would put Hague on the far left fringe of
American politics. Here in Britain, though, Hague is the leader of the
Conservative Party -- and he's been criticized for taking his party
too far to the right as he campaigns for the national election on June
7.
Hague's big-government style of conservatism reflects the most
striking difference between this spring's British election and the
U.S. election last fall: The whole debate on this side of the Atlantic
is several notches to the left of the American political conversation.
At a time when the British are struggling to decide whether their
free-market, English-speaking country is more "American" than
"European," the tenor of the political campaign demonstrates that the
British are thoroughly European in their enthusiasm for the beneficent
hand of a generous government.
"The British are more European than American in their attitude toward
tax-and-spend," said London political analyst Hugo Young. "Brits are
no readier than the French for the minimal state."
[snip]
