This makes slightly more sense

A surprisingly amusing blog posting on the Spectator Coffee House outlet (well, really, it is a clog as well) by Melanie Phillips on the twin subjects of the American Tea-Party Movement and Sarah Palin, both dismissed and sneered at by the political elite on both sides of the fence in the United States, only to find both acquiring a hard-to-stop momentum.

Ms Phillips simplifies matters somewhat in that she does not delve into the opposing views various individual members and organizations within the Tea-Party Movement hold of Ms Palin - that would require a more serious analysis of American politics as she is lived. However, the piece ends with a comment that makes somewhat more sense than the call for a European Tea-Party Movement.

In Britain, that core conservative agenda of defending life, liberty and social order (which in turn offers the best chance of success in the pursuit of happiness) is scorned not just by Labour but by the ‘Red Tory’/’Blue Labour ‘hopey changey ‘Cameroons. ‘Core conservative’ voters, currently scorned and abandoned by the Conservative party, are in despair over the non-choice on offer to them at the forthcoming election.

Britain needs its own ‘Tea-Party’ movement to challenge the whole dopey-changey thing here, too.

The whole notion is at least conceivable in a country the roots of whose politics are the same as that of America. In fact, those roots are here, though we have been diligently digging them up.

In the meantime, here is Glenn Reynolds's account of the Tea-Party Convention and the astonishingly optimistic mood of the participants.