On September 25, America’s conservatives gathered in the capital of the world’s only superpower to contemplate their navels in the hope of discovering why they have recently been denied power in Washington, London, and Paris. Almost simultaneously, the British Labour party gathered in this Channel-side town for its first party conference (convention, to Americans) since taking the reins of government in the name of “radical centrism.”

To travel from Washington to Brighton at twice the speed of sound is disorienting in ordinary times; if you move from the depths of conservative despair to the heights of left-of-center triumphalism in a day’s time, as I did, you might go mad. The conservatives in Britain and America have won almost every ideological battle worth fighting. In America, they have sold the idea that government budgets should be balanced; in Britain, they have forced Labour to accept the spending limits of the now-departed Tory government and to recognize, as Prime Minister Tony Blair did in his speech to his party, that “this country, any country, will not just carry on paying out more in taxes and getting less . . . . Hold debt down . . . . Earn before you spend.” Margaret Thatcher couldn’t have said it any better.