Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nodrog
but I think we've reached a stage where its just silly to claim that theres no meaningful difference between Labour and anyone else
|
I'd say the only place there is a meaningful difference is on civil liberties stuff like ID cards. Although the Conservatives are certainly better on that particular issue, they cannot exactly be said to have had a glowing track record. When it comes to things like proposed new stop and quiz powers the Conservatives hardly gave a principled defence of liberty. There might have been issues where the Tories have been much better but no instances come to mind. On the anti-terror over-reaction they have generally accused the government of mismanagement and bungling rather than saying their policies are morally wrong.
Quote:
|
Bush/Blair [...] complete disasters for their respective countries.
|
Most of this is down to Iraq though, which there's no real evidence that a Conservative government would have done anything much different (and they were the only realistic alternative at the time of the last election). I don't see any big gap between Labour and the Tories on any fundamental issues. The Labour Party seem worse collectively on some libertarian issues (like smoking in pubs, which I doubt the Tories would bother reversing) but the Conservatives are collectively much worse on social policy. There are random little things (like Cameron's downgrading of ecstacy proposal - which even the ****ing police support, and Osborne's proposal to develop open source stuff in government) which are a plus in the Tories column, but they wouldn't have that much of an impact (if they were even implemented, I suspect an ecstacy downgrade would herald such faggotry from the press that they'd not bother).
To take my own area a Tory government wouldn't mean that much - they might extend the right-to-buy a bit but that's about it. Since Brown's rhetoric on becoming leader was about improving people's route to home ownership. So what's the big difference?