Similar, but different-Key and Cameron

Scoopit!

The Economist has an interesting leading article on David Cameron, the man who would be Prime Minister. The article interested Adam, for several reasons, not the least being some of the parallels with John Key.

In both countries, we find right of centre parties with new, younger leaders, unbeholden to the past and who have jettisoned much past baggage.

The article notes:-

Yet the shift in British politics is now palpable. Gordon Brown, Mr Blair’s successor, is a workaholic with thus far a tin ear for public discourse; Britain’s much-vaunted economy, which he ran proudly for a decade as chancellor, is tanking; and, if opinion polls are any guide, Mr Cameron looks like being a shoo-in at the next general election, due by June 2010.

This is not such a dissimilar position to that In NZ, though our election is scheduled for this year. There are some distinct similarities, though of course many issues which are quite different.

This astonishing change of fortune raises two big questions. Is it durable enough to make Mr Cameron prime minister? And would he prove a good one?

These questions are asked frequently in NZ about John Key.

It is interesting to note this further comment also:

Hence the importance of the second question. Some doubt Mr Cameron’s potential as prime minister on the ground that he does not have enough coherent policies. That is not fair. It is too early to expect the Tories to have a detailed and costed programme for government; indeed, if they had produced one, Mr Brown would probably have stolen more of their ideas by now. Anyway, the Conservatives have plenty of fairly sensible policies, for example on family-friendly employment rules and education reform.

What they don’t have is a prospectus for a new Conservative revolution. But then Mr Cameron is not that sort of Tory . Beneath his modernising glitz and occasional new-age gobbledygook, he is an old-fashioned, pragmatic gradualist. On the key question of public-service reform he in essence pledges to pick up the agenda of choice and competition in schools and hospitals where Mr Blair left off.

and perhaps to ponder on what a New Zealand analyst might write about Key.

Adam suspects that Key, is right of centre, but a pragmatist and gradualist, rather than a fire breathing Brash/Douglas dragon. Key will take decisions and some of them may have to be hard ones. Adam does not think Key will shrink from those, but he thinks Key has a greater empathy with the social implications than Brash would have done. Key was an investment banker and businessman, whose mother was a refugee from the Nazis. Brash was an economist and central banker and a son of the Presbyterian manse. This difference in backgrounds may well prove to be one of the defining differences between the two; plus it may well inform the way in which Key tends to approach the world.

Scoopit!