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]