Since the 2006 mid-term congressional elections that began the Republican party’s decline, American pundits have been scanning the horizon for models of conservatism that the GOP might usefully emulate. David Cameron was their first nominee. His embrace of climate-change regulations and, more significantly, his wary avoidance of traditional Tory issues like immigration and ‘Europe’ marked him out as a new kind of conservative (that is, a not very conservative conservative.)