"Obama says Democrats need to avoid being a 'buzzkill'"

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Comparing political parties internationally is more difficult than people realise. It’s easy to pick a couple of issues and show that either party is more conservative than the other.

For example, the British Conservatives support the monarchy, they want immigration to be extremely low (long standing target of “tens of thousands”), are opposed to separation of the church and state, and they generally prefer a strong central government. The US Republican Party is against the monarchy, are comparatively relaxed about immigration (as strange as that might sound to US readers!), generally support the separation of church and state, and generally prefer a weak central government.

Wow - the Republicans are less conservative than the Tories!

In reality, you’ve got to consider things like context. The Republicans are conservative *within the context of the US constitution*. Mostly. British conservatism is less nailed down, but is of course also shaped by the British context. Of course British conservatives are pro-monarchy, of course American conservatives are pro-gun, of course British conservatives want to centralise power while American conservatives want to distribute it.

British conservatives are opposed to the separation of church & state?!

Where did you get that from? I've never heard of the British Conservative party having any agenda or wishes to combine the church & state.

The monarchy is a given really almost & has support even from the Labour Party, a supposed progressive party, unless you go by Jeremy Corbyn's personal views of republicanism which were shared by come of his party comrades.

Wasn't one of Trump's biggest draws on the American political stage to "build a wall" to keep the South Americans out of North America? I would say the Republicans are fairly anti-immigration, at least relative to the Democrats in the U.S. There seem to be more extreme Republicans than moderates, to me, in the current political climate over there.

Centralised power for Conservatives, at least within Britain does seem the most popular opinion amongst Tory MP's from what I can gather, although the concept of centralised power within a European context is treated differently, considering Brexit & all.

I stand by my view that American Conservatives are more Conservative (on average) than British Conservatives. It is easy to find Conservative Americans who will cite a constitution from the 18th century, whilst most of the British Conservative electorate probably don't even look past the last century, never mind going as far back as that.

The church and the state are combined in the UK. We have an official state religion, and senior clergy automatically get seats in the House of Lords.

Admittedly this is roughly analogous to the monarchy - it exists on paper, but there is still total religious freedom. But the Conservatives generally are antidisestablishmentarianists.


Gun rights are the same in the US.


Most migration into the US is legal migration. Republicans tend to be more anti-immigration than the Democrats, but more pro-immigration than Labour.



It's easy to find conservative Brits who cite the Bible, the Quran, the Magna Carta, Edmund Burke. Many Parliamentary traditions come from the time of Cromwell.

It's slightly misleading to say the constitution is "from the 18th century". The last substantial textual amendment was in the 1960s, while the meaning of the constitution itself is under constant judicial review.

You make a lot of good points - I particularly like the point on state religion/the church, it is easy to forget this exists in the UK, I think - considering that it doesn't get much discussion in the mainstream media (unless I have missed this discussion completely).

Like you say, it is more of a technicality than something that is enforced I guess.

This is a reasonable brief document/link for anybody interested in this discussion:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8886/