OPEN YOUR EYES and you are in the still-pretty Victorian seaside town of Bournemouth, with clean beaches and a museum that houses the pre-Raphaelite paintings and chotchkes that newly rich families of the Victorian period so loved to collect. Close your eyes and listen to the speeches of the Tory politicians gathered at the Conservative party conference here, and suddenly you are back in America — or rather, back in the America of C-SPAN and CNN’s Inside Politics.

Determined to deflate Labour party head Tony Blair’s claim that he is a tough-minded leader in the style of Margaret Thatcher, Tory chairman Brian Mawhinney tries a little Lloyd Bentsen: “I know Margaret Thatcher, and you are no Margaret Thatcher.” John Major offered Blair his sympathies because the health of the British economy made it impossible for him to use the Clintonite slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” These sorts of jibes, and the sound of Louis Armstrong warbling “What a Wonderful World” in the background, are only the surface manifestations of the complete Americanization of British politics.