In many ways, UK politics has functioned as a kind of weird inverse of the American political landscape over the past couple years. In America, it was George Bush who was despised and ridiculed by the public as a bumbling, mentally challenged idiot and whose party hit rock bottom thanks to the war and the economic crisis.
In Britain, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have, if anything, suffered an even worse fate, with hatred of Brown in particular about as bad as it gets (search Google and I think you'll find the most linked result is a YouTube video of him picking his nose).
And just as the Rahm Emmanuel-led Democrats assiduously recruited moderates to swell their numbers in Congress, David Cameron, the leader of the Tories, has taken great pains to reach out to the center of the electorate, attempting to rebrand "conservatives" (as in, we like to conserve) as forward-thinking, socially tolerant and environmentally friendly. They've gone so far in that direction, apparently, that their logo is a...tree.
They call themselves progressives, too. According to The Guardian, last week, the "shadow chancellor," George Osborne remarked "The torch of progressive politics has been passed to a new generation of politicians – and those politicians are Conservatives", a comment that forced me to reread it a couple times.
And in a scene no American would recognize, Cameron has praised Britain's entirely government-run health care system again and again, going so far as to say, "Tony Blair once explained his priority in three words: 'Education, education, education.' I can do it in three letters – NHS."
Except that now, Cameron is engaging in hasty damage control after some members of his party made remarks disparaging the UK health care system.
Apparently, Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP whose main claim to fame is a YouTube clip where he humiliates Brown, went on Fox News and said the UK system is awful and that it should be scrapped.
Hannan made it clear that healthcare should be opened more to the market, that patients should be able to pay for drugs rather than have to wait in queues. He wants a system of personal accounts into which people would save and then shop around for health care in the public or private sector.
Health expenditure would be managed by the individual, in association with his or her doctor. The state would provide the safety net for those who could not afford to save enough, but its role would be drastically reduced. There would be low-cost insurance to cover people for unforeseen catastrophic illness. But the NHS would go.
Apparently, in knocking government-run health care, Hannan crossed something of a political red line:
It took some time for the Tory machine to react, but when Cameron heard, he and others in the high command squashed Hannan in quick succession.
As the leader dismissed his views as "eccentric", shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley said he had done millions of NHS patients a "disservice".
And Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Tory MEPs, even admitted the Tories' reputation abroad could suffer: "It does worry me a little bit that an impression is being given in the United States about the views of David Cameron and the Conservative party which is not accurate."
So there you have it: in Britain, the most conservative politicians run screaming from any mention of tinkering with the country's government-run, universal health care system.
And in America, the liberal party won't even consider implementing a vastly scaled-down version of it, when they have control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress.