This afternoon he will visit east London to talk about social justice; a speech on the environment will follow within days. The coming weeks will bring an announcement on measures to increase the number of women MPs, a theme he stressed in his victory speech yesterday. ...he intends to abandon such things as education vouchers and support for private healthcare. As a leader who describes himself as a small-l liberal he will calm the party's obsession with issues such as asylum and immigration, and not just for symbolic reasons.
Yes, folks, the Tories are the party on the right in this country. So if you thought of yourself as being somewhere on the left of the so-called political spectrum, and you had to choose, hypothetically, between...oh, I don't know, say, John Kerry, and this guy, who would you pick?
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In fairness, and as Conservatives in England freely admit, they are less hewn to any particular ideology than to do what it takes to become the party in power. So mostly what one can infer from this a that these are issues on which the majority of Britons cast their votes, rather than Conservatism is the UK is intrinsically left-wing.
The key difference, of course, is that the Tories will actually stand up for environmental rights, social justice, and against farming out of programs for the common good to private contractors. Conservatism, as it's practiced in the US, seems to be strictly about the first half of the equation, crafting a palatable message. The reality of American Conservative rule has no relation to that message. You certainly aren't getting a smaller government, or less government waste, or personal freedom; the Clear Skies initiative dirties them, the No Child Left Behind Act leaves behind the ones without the foresight not to be born poor, The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 protects creditors and allows them to abuse the system at the expense of consumers, the Healthy Forests Initiative destroys forests in order to save them...man, I was doing so well with my even-handed critique of British politics there for a second.
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