Re: US Presidential Election
Tory MPs abandon Republicans to back Barack Obama
A Telegraph survey of the Conservative parliamentary party indicates that "Obamamania" has reached the opposition benches of the House of Commons, presenting a dilemma for David Cameron, the Tory leader, when he meets Mr Obama in London on Saturday.
Senator John McCain, Mr Obama's Republican opponent, has long been a friend of the Conservatives and accepted Mr Cameron's offer to speak at the Tory party conference at Bournemouth in 2006.
The transatlantic bonds between the two parties, from Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan endured through the 20th century.
But that political kinship has been under strain during the presidency of George W Bush.
The Telegraph asked all 195 Conservative MPs if they wanted the Republican presidential candidate Mr McCain or his Democratic rival Barack Obama to win in November.
Of the 113 MPs who responded, 91 had a preference, 63 of whom backed McCain and 28 Obama. Thirteen said they were undecided while nine had no preference.
The findings will make troubling reading for Mr McCain who has longstanding links with Britain and other European nations and has sought to stress his independence from the Bush administration.
Many Tory MPs spoke warmly of the Vietnam war hero but a substantial minority felt the need for a clean break from Mr Bush and his Republican party.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary, echoed many Tories when he said bluntly that either Mr McCain or Mr Obama "would be a huge improvement on the current incumbent".
But the MP for Kensington and Chelsea said he was backing the Illinois senator, who would become the first non-white president of the United States, because America "needs change".
"The symbolism of Obama is huge. The election of a black president would be such an enormous step forward for America's national history, and politics, its culture."
Sir Malcolm said that he supported John Kerry, the Democrat challenger in the 2004 election - "almost anyone but Bush" - because of two issues: Iraq "and the use of torture, disguised as something else".
Frustration at the course of the Iraq war was a recurring complaint from Tory MPs, though some had been mollified Mr McCain's criticism of Mr Bush's handling of the conflict.
One former Bush supporter, now behind McCain - an ex-minister and long-serving Tory MP who did not want to be named - said: "I voted for the war but when no weapons of mass destruction were found I felt duped, quite frankly."
Another McCain backer, Richard Ottaway, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, supported Mr Kerry in 2004 because he "felt that George Bush had misrepresented the threat to the Western world and as such had gone into war on a false premise".
Given Mr McCain's appeal to such Conservatives, it is significant that Mr Obama has managed to make simultaneous inroads with so many other Tories. The Democrat hopeful would probably have won an even larger swathe of Tory support had the Republicans adopted a less multilateralist candidate.
The Conservative-Republican relationship hit its nadir in 2004 when Mr Bush's chief advisor Karl Rove had criticised the then Tory leader Michael Howard for his attacks on Bush's ally Tony Blair. Mr Howard later reacted coolly to George Bush's re-election.
Despite being assured anonymity, as were all participants in our survey, Mr Howard declined to take part. Most of the half dozen or so leading Tories also declined or maintained they had no preference, even though some had clearly stated past preferences.
The Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, who wrote an article for The Spectator backing George Bush in 2004, smiled when approached for this article in Central Lobby of Westminster. "I'm not getting into that," he said.
David Cameron, to whom the Telegraph put the survey questions during a shared lift ride at Portcullis House, turned good-humouredly to an aide - in pretend confusion at how to respond - before insisting that he had no preference.
There are memories of how uncomfortable John Major was made to feel by Bill Clinton after the Tories helped the elder Bush's failed re-election bid in 1992.
One MP said: "We have to work with whichever one wins so I'd prefer not to take sides, particularly when 90 per cent of mainstream US politicians would fit roughly into the British Conservative Party."
Some MPs also expressed distaste at commentating on a foreign election.
The nearest a Shadow Cabinet member came to endorsing a candidate was David Willetts, whose office pointed to recent comments he made on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions.
The Havant MP said it was a "tragedy" that "a surge of goodwill" towards America after 911 had been "frittered away ... it has made the world a more dangerous and unstable place".
The Shadow Universities Secretary was full of praise for Mr McCain's experience and independence, but said an Obama victory would restore "the world's faith in America" and would represent the more "vivid change".
When the show's presenter later interpreted this as support for Mr Obama, Mr Willetts did not contradict him.
"Obama is an incredibly exciting guy", Mr Willetts had told listeners, a view that is not uncommon among Tory MPs.
Douglas Carswell, the 37-year-old Harwich MP, said: "Obama is the anti-politician in a time when people are rightly suspicious of political elites."
"There is a feeling in the younger centre-Right that we need radical change," Mr Carswell told the Telegraph. "The centre-Right should be small government and Bush is part of that big government consensus. McCain is a continuation of that."
Mr Carswell had reservations about Mr Obama - "his idea of healthcare is not mine" - but he observed that he is the first candidate since Richard Nixon "not to accept taxpayers' money for his campaign - proof of his Edmund Burke.com credentials".
He added that he had "given up on current mainstream Republicans" who had returned to a pre-Barry Goldwater position of big business and protectionism.
Trade concerns were also cited by David Heathcoat Amory, a Eurosceptic who said that Democrats were normally bad for the UK because they are protectionist, "as is Obama". But Bush was protectionist too, he said.
"At the first sign of trouble in the American economy he put steel tariffs on, so I didn't trust him even on trade," said the MP for Wells, who is pro-McCain.
Yet amid all the criticism of George Bush, unflinching supporters of the old Conservative-Republican alliance persist in large numbers within the parliamentary party.
"I'm a Tory and therefore a Republican in American terms," said Gerald Howarth, MP for Aldershot.
In 1968, when anti-Vietnam students were rioting outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, a 20-year-old Mr Howarth was involved in public counter-displays of support for American foreign policy.
"At the CNN party in the last presidential election, I said Bush will win. He has the religious Right - people here find it hard to understand when churches here have little influence."
Mr Bush drew support from the Tories' own social conservatives, such as Nadine Dorries, who has been at the forefront of Westminster attempts to reduce the time limit for abortions.
The Mid Bedfordshire MP said of the Democrats in America: "I could not support a party which supports partial-birth abortion."
But other Tories were wary of religious conservatism.
"I don't particularly care for the religiosity of the Bush style," said Bob Neill, MP for Bromley and Chislehurst. "McCain more recognisably adopts the language and style with which we feel comfortable in the UK."
An Obama supporter, the Norfolk South MP Richard Bacon, said: "In many ways I would be thought of as a right wing Conservative. But because I do not go on about God, guns and gays that makes me a liberal in American terms."
Criticism of Mr Bush was sometimes personal. One MP said: "I don't understand how a man with a father like his turned out so bad. His father was a class act, a pragmatist."
Other MPs sought to counter such attacks. James Gray, MP for North Wiltshire, said: "As far as I know he is a fine man as an individual."
Mr Gray, who describes himself as having always been a Republican supporter, said that at the end of two terms "any president has difficulties".
"I was very opposed to Iraq," said Mr Gray, "but I think he has done pretty well, both in the economy and most areas of foreign policy."
Laurence Robertson, MP for Tewkesbury, said: "I don't think Bush has been the disaster that everyone says." The world had changed during Mr Bush's presidency - "there are challenges that weren't there years ago".
Mr Robertson, a Shadow Northern Ireland minister, said that when the IRA bombing campaign was ongoing "there was a feeling that Americans didn't feel our pain, so I think we ought to understand their pain".
Such Tories were wary about Mr Obama's record. "I don't quite know what the substance is," Mr Howarth said. "Change is a slogan, not a policy."
Yet even some Right-wing Tories, who were transferring their support from Bush to McCain, expressed curiosity about Obama.
"Obama is good news," said the strongly Thatcherite David Amess, who is narrowly in favour of McCain.
The Southend West MP, who says he has not greatly admired an American president since Ronald Reagan, gave Mr Bush the benefit of the doubt at the 2004 election. Not any longer, he said: "Bush foreign policy has brought the UK to its knees.
"Blair was stupid enough to lie to the House of Commons and we were taken in by it."
Another Thatcherite MP from Essex is arguably the most committed Democrat of all in the Conservative Party. Simon Burns, who spent 10 days working for Hilary Clinton's campaign, does not see a contradiction between the two philosophies.
The Democrats "are a party who not only has a commitment to the free enterprise system but to using the strengths of that system to helping those who are less well off".
The West Chelmsford MP said he was "in deep mourning" over Mrs Clinton's failure to win the nomination.
"It was lonely being a Clintonista in the 1990s," he said. "It is not lonely being a Democrat in the Tories today."
