Face of the Future; Britain's long-suffering Tories dream of a born-again 'Camerlot.' Is charismatic David Cameron their savior?

Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Kasia Gruszkowska in London)

In the distance, you can barely discern them: a ragged band of politicians and camp followers emerging from the wilderness. This is Britain's Conservative Party today. After eight years in purgatory, banished to the margins by Tony Blair and his great Labour Party landslide of 1997, the Tories are on the comeback trail.

Maybe. Their hopes are pinned on a young, bright, some would even say charismatic politician by the name of David Cameron, who this week is all but certain to be elected the fifth leader in eight years of the party of Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher. The Tories have invested a lot in this moneyed graduate of Eton and Oxford who manages to come across as a sensible, modern family man. So much so that there's a word for the promised land of regained political power to which the Conservatives hope this Kennedyesque figure will lead them: Camerlot.

The Tories still have a long, long way to go. Yes, Labour may have scored the weakest of its three consecutive victories in May. But it commands a majority of 66 (out of 646) in the House of Commons. More important, Labour under Blair has come to own the center ground of British politics--the territory from which the Tory party must relaunch itself if it is to become a real threat in the next election, expected in 2009. The political situation four years hence could favor the Conservatives. Economists predict that the British economy will weaken. And there's the fatigue factor to consider: a dozen years of Labour could take a toll on the electorate. Even so, says Mark Gill of the polling firm MORI, having a new, young leader "won't be enough on its own" to resurrect the Tories. "They have to be seen as the credible alternative."

That will be the biggest challenge for whoever leads the party. It's almost certain to be Cameron, whose come-from-behind campaign has blown away his once favored rival, David Davis, a Tory elder statesman whose up-from-the-housing-projects story also appeals to a party in need of a strong de-toffing. The fact that Cameron, 39, in only his second term as an M.P., could win the vote of a party membership whose average age is 68 shows just how keenly the Tories recognize the need to break with the past. Credit for that goes to the outgoing leader (and Cameron's mentor), Michael Howard, 64, who in resigning in October encouraged the party to reinvent itself.

At this point in the Conservatives' life cycle, symbols matter as much as substance. Cameron, the yuppie son of a stockbroker, has chosen to be strong on mood music and light on policy specifics. He believes that "constructive ambiguity," as some of his supporters frame it, is the right approach for a party that is in the rebuilding phase. "We've lost three elections in a row," he told NEWSWEEK. "It's time for a rethink." According to YouGov polling, 65 percent of Britons believe the Conservative Party is out of touch. Cameron acknowledged this in the interview and agreed with the assessment of YouGov's Stephan Shakespeare, who told NEWSWEEK: "People have never really rejected Conservative values or Conservative policies. What they've rejected is the Conservative Party."

In recasting the party, Cameron makes the most of his own fresh face and the youthfulness of his family--working-mom wife and two children. (His 3-year-old son, Ivan, has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and Cameron has become a ...