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"  If events of the last seven years have given Americans little to agree on, they&amp;#039;ve left one thing beyond dispute: The special relationship remains special. Tony Blair&amp;#039;s championing of the American cause in Iraq always made the case for George Bush better than George Bush did. It also cost him his job. And as poll after poll in Britain now indicate, Blair&amp;#039;s Labour party may soon be following him out of power.  But to attribute what&amp;#039;s looking like a sea change in British politics entirely to fatigue with Labour would be a mistake, because it would underestimate David Cameron, the young Tory leader who has undertaken the reinvention of Britain&amp;#039;s Conservative party--much the way Blair did with New Labour in the &amp;#039;90s. Through 11 years of Labour dominance, the Tories had come to be regarded as the party of the wealthy, the old, the mean-spirited. Since becoming leader in 2005, the youthful Cameron has transformed that image. Moribund and confused American conservatism would do well to take note. Cameron has steered the Tories hard toward the center on social issues, emphasizing poverty and the environment and a commitment to social services like schools and hospitals. All while remaining conservative where it counts to British conservatives: core economic tenets like lower taxes and restrained government spending. The shift in emphasis is unmistakable. &amp;quot;The great challenge in the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival,&amp;quot; Cameron said last year. &amp;quot;The great challenge of this decade and the next is social revival.&amp;quot;  Britons aren&amp;#039;t used to Tory leaders who talk this way, and it&amp;#039;s proved a winning formula. Opinion polls now clamor to outdo one another to dramatize Labour&amp;#039;s misfortune: One newspaper poll declared this the worst time for the party of the Left since 1935. With numbers like that, the next general election could come very soon. And there&amp;#039;s little doubt now who&amp;#039;s the favorite. In a recent special election in industrial Crewe, a safe Labour district, the Tories stole the seat. It was the first time they&amp;#039;ve taken a special election from Labour since 1978--an upset followed not long after by Margaret Thatcher&amp;#039;s move to Downing Street, and 18 years of Conservative rule. ***** To see a slideshow of the 75 most important people of the 21st Century, please click here. To see the archive of the 75 most important people of the 21st Century, please click here. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5042/david-cameron-1008/>