“How do you vote?” I asked.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“Politically, how do you vote?”

“Um … well, I vote Tory, actually.”

“No!” I reacted with shock and disdain.

“Yes ” I do,” she said, suddenly feeling the need to defend herself.

“That’s too bad. You guys are screwed until you ditch Hague and go with Portillo,” I offered, referring to the British Conservative Party’s need for better leadership.

I then treated this lovely UK national to the strangest episode of her life, as I, a loyal son of the United States, delivered a five-minute mini-soliloquy on why Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Labour was the right choice for Britain and deserved a second term.

I am not a political scientist. But I am a thoroughly addicted political junkie — a tough affliction to bear in these times of raw disenchantment with the American political scene. Outside of the John McCain Traveling Road Show and watching Jim Jeffords stick it to Trent and the Good “Ol Boys, there isn’t much in Washington to fend off the tides of cynicism. Yet we political animals need a constant diet of raw meat, lest we get anemic. Fortunately, the current British political scene offers a nourishing international diet.

I happened upon the wonders of Parliament quite by accident. I arrived in London for a semester of study at a time when the Gingrich/Lott Congress and the Clinton White House made American politics spiritual kamikaze for anyone with a functioning soul. Tony Blair, by contrast, was less than a year into his first term as prime minister and was still very much on a glamorous, idealistic honeymoon — doing cool things like inviting Oasis and the Spice Girls to his official residence at 10 Downing Street in London.

Seeing as how the odds are small that the British Parliament would ever pass a resolution or enact a piece of legislation directly affecting my life, politics became pure sport. It was consequence-free. I was wholly without responsibility (though, luckily enough, not without rights) in this instance; full of opinion, and free to pick a team and start rooting. What the hell, I thought. So I dove in with both feet, making my way through any number of Britain’s 11 major daily newspapers with reckless abandon.

In contemporary Britain, who you root for is mostly a no-brainer. Since coming to power in 1997, Tony Blair’s New Labour Party has taken the now-proven Clinton/New Democrat formula of center-left politics (and obsessive message control) and engineered a minor revolution. Blair loves Clinton for figuring out how to make this work. Clinton loves Blair for loving him. They both cherish the politician as rock star idea, and fancied themselves a geopolitical Butch and Sundance team. (See this picture of Blair returning to 10 Downing Street the day before he calls a general election. What a stud!)

In the last couple of years, the British public has soured on Blair and his junta of well-polished one-time populists, but he still beat the Conservatives to a bloody pulp in the recent general election. So he’ll continue calling the shots for the foreseeable future. If you’re going to bandwagon, do so with a winner.

Newly-minted British political enthusiasts should root for Blair and Labour for the same reason the British public chose to give them another term: The British Conservative party is nothing less than an unsavory disaster — leaderless, divided, at their best stuffy, at their worst xenophobic and tinged with racism. The Tories — as your new enemies are known casually — stand a better chance of gaining the governorship of Minnesota in the coming years than anything resembling power in the United Kingdom. They resemble a perfectly crafted movie villain, complete with sinister British accents. Learn to loathe them.

Now that the election is over, the real sport begins. As with any head of government, the prime minister gets to assemble a cabinet to run things. Like Blair, all cabinet ministers must be members of the House of Commons. But beyond that, they are not subject to any confirmation process, only to the whim of the prime minister and his immediate political needs. This sets the stage for some major league backstabbing and recrimination.

Every so often, a prime minister will attempt to jumpstart his government by carrying out what the British media tepidly calls a “cabinet reshuffle.” This is pleasant talk for a powerful torpedoing, without mercy, of any number of individuals who had been loyal to the PM during the turbulent years of his ascent. It gets no better than this. Blair’s recent cabinets have been real barracuda tanks. Much like Clinton’s cabinet in its vintage, these people all hate each other very much.

Without question, however, the Monday Night Football moment — the reason you became a fan in the first place — is Prime Ministers Questions. Bar none, this is the greatest spectacle in all of Western democracy. Every Wednesday, for half an hour, our beloved Mr. Blair enters a packed House of Commons, much like Rocky on fight night, to face questions about his conduct as prime Minister. Most of the questions are fired across the table by whoever is leading the Tories that week. While the prime minister and his opponent posture for the cameras and zing one another with one liners, the rest of the House grumbles, barks or howls at various intervals, depending on their allegiances.

Consider what the parallel American version would look like. Imagine if every week George W. had to come to the chamber of the House of Representatives, surrounded by his cabinet, to field questions from Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt. No spin doctors. No help from Karen Hughes.

You’re right. Such a spectacle would be thoroughly unwatchable.

BUT … imagine if Clinton had to come down and face Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich at the height of any one of his scandals? It’s game time!

Recently deposed Tory leader William Hague was actually a better debater than Mr. Blair, and frequently came out of Question Time having scored more rhetorical points. No matter. Blair still walked out a bad-ass winner every week, by virtue of his 179-seat majority in the House.

And that’s why he’s my guy.

Let’s face it. If you’re a young American political junkie, and you’ve stuck with the New Democrats or the GOP (either the “Contract with America” kind or the newer, gooey-er compassionate version) you’ve subjected yourself to untold moral and psychological abuse in recent years. You’ve earned the right to do something for yourself.

Get behind a safe bet and enjoy the game in its purity. Tony Blair just became the first Labour prime minister to convincingly win a second term, thereby guaranteeing a savage and memorable battle to see which of his loyal cabinet ministers gets to topple and/or succeed him, and perhaps someday become PM himself. It promises to be, if I may, bloody hell. So throw in a Clash CD, log onto The Guardian Web site, fire yourself up a proper cup of tea and pray for ugliness. Here’s where politics gets real.