I’ve been a Democrat almost all my life: I was fascinated by John F Kennedy and when I left school in 1972, before I went to university, I spent four months working on George McGovern’s presidential campaign in Michigan. I’ve had links to the party ever since – I was out campaigning with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire just a few months ago.

That makes me unusual in the Tory party. Being a Conservative MP in the 1990s and not just a Democrat but a Clinton-ista was a lonely position to be in: people were bemused by my political views but tolerated them as if I was a wayward child who would see the light at some point.

Fortunately now – and I have George W Bush to thank for this – there are numerous colleagues who are sympathetic to the Democratic party. Part of that is because the Republican party today is not the Republican party of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay, it’s actually an extremely right-wing and in some ways unpleasant political party.

I am trying to avoid the word nasty for obvious reasons but it has become a nasty party. There’s no compassion.

In Britain, whether you are a Tory or a socialist or whatever, we do have the basic belief that you should help and give a leg up to the less well off in society. Well, over the past 15 years the Republican party, since Newt Gingrich and the loonies took over, has given the appearance that it just does not care.

It was obvious that the feeling among the Tory party was starting to change four years ago after George Bush’s first presidency. Now Barack Obama’s appeal – his ability to capture the imagination – is not restricted to Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs. There are a number of Tory MPs who are keen.

What you can see – you saw it with Tony Blair and I’d argue you’re seeing it with David Cameron now – is that every so often in politics someone emerges who inspires people, partly because of their character, partly because of what they’re saying and their policy direction. Blair did it in the mid1990s. Bill Clinton did it and Obama’s doing it now.

The atmosphere at the Democratic convention has been fantastic: whatever happens to Obama on November 4, the Democrats will make significant gains in the Senate, so they will control it with a good working majority. They will also make gains in the House of Representatives, so the mood is ebullient without being triumphalist.

The delegates are happy – happier today than they were last Monday because they weren’t quite sure what the Clintons were going to do, particularly Bill. Now they do and there’s a feeling that this is their year. They believe Obama is going to win.

I do detect there a slight queasiness, however, because he is neck and neck with John McCain in the polls rather than being ahead. You can argue that when Bill Clinton came to the convention in 1992 he was 15 points behind; when Al Gore came to the convention in 2000 he was 11 points behind: they came out of their conventions with a lead and they both won the popular vote (Gore polled half a million more votes than Bush). So we’ll have to wait a few days for the polls.

Some of the things you see at the convention are amusing. There was a woman the other day – I assume it was a woman – walking around as an ostrich with a placard saying that Bush has his head in the sand on the economy. Vendors have descended on the place like ants, flogging buttons and flags in the most amazing get-ups – stars and stripes uniforms and hats. Some of the delegates have turned up unusually dressed or with their chests covered with buttons. Here people expect highly orchestrated and colourful political gatherings, but you can’t quite imagine it in Britain. You can see why Neil Kinnock got it so wrong back in 1992. It plays well here, but not back at home.

There are things we could learn, though. The organisation is slick and what they do for certain speeches is to flood the hall with volunteers giving out flags or posters carrying their name before the speech. So as soon as the speaker comes into the hall, everyone stands up holding posters or the message of the moment, whatever is appropriate – for Bill Clinton they doled out American flags.

The uniformity of the message is very clever and very professional. When you look out from behind the speaker on the podium there’s a sea of red, white and blue and that’s very powerful.

The films they show to introduce speakers are something we could emulate, too. It’s using Hollywood at its best. The short films give you a real idea of who the person speaking is – not why they think the public sector borrowing requirement is too high, or whatever. I think Cameron senses this and that is why he lets people have glimpses of his family life. It’s important that people see you are a paid-up member of the human race.

For me, one of the high points of the week was Ted Kennedy’s speech. I holiday in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, every summer and a few years back Ted invited me round for coffee. It was fascinating. It was the house where he and Bobby and JFK grew up, he showed me JFK’s bedroom and some Lowry-esque painting of the family by Jackie Kennedy. Later he invited me onto his yacht.

In 1980, as he conceded his own presidential bid, Ted ended by saying, “the hope still lives and the dream shall never die”. This time he said, “the hope rises again, and the dream lives on”. I was there watching him in 1980 and it was wonderful to see everything come full circle.

Simon Burns, Conservative MP for West Chelmsford

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