The new Tories,not Tories at all?

The economist has nailed its political colours to the wall in its latest issue.

Writing on the revival of the party under David Cameron,it says

The strain of Conservatism that Mr Cameron embodies has thus become unfamiliar. It is pragmatic, incremental, willing to adapt to win and keep office. This is the flexible Conservatism of Benjamin Disraeli, a 19th-century prime minister, combining his awareness of the needs and votes of the lower classes with the gradualism of Edmund Burke, who articulated Tory alarm at the French Revolution. It is a Conservatism that is sceptical of state power and favours market solutions, sound money and patriotism—but all in moderation.

The whole essay is worth a read,and argues that perhaps Cameron is not a Tory after all

He understood that the Tories were still hobbled by a reputation, acquired (fairly or otherwise) in office, as callous, bigoted and sleazy. This was so poisonous and persistent that, in “blind tastings”, voters who liked Conservative policies withdrew their approval when they learnt the ideas were Tory ones. Mr Cameron embarked on a strategic campaign to detoxify the party brand; thus his much-ridiculed but calculated stunts, such as a husky-powered visit to a melting glacier to advertise his environmentalism, his call (though he never put it quite like this) for people to “hug a hoodie”, or a trip to Rwanda that unfortunately coincided with flooding in his Oxfordshire constituency. He ditched his party’s hostile views on gay rights and promoted ethnic-minority activists.