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I've been finding out lately that a disturbing number of you are conservatives/Tory supporters of some stripe or another. Being somewhat of a flaming red socialist myself, I'm interested in how you guys justify the belief that the rich ought to get richer and the poor ought to fend for themselves that seems to be the Tory standpoint to me...

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I'll take the Tories over the Bush nightmare we have here.

That being said, I'm an devout leftist :-)

Frankly, I think Blair is a traitor to his own party with his actions of war in cohoorts with Bush. Blair walks, talks, and sounds like a Tory, but he's leading Labour? *boggle*

It's worth pointing out that Bush won't talk to Michael Howard (the leader of the Conservative Party) at the moment. Oh, and that Blair has avoided contact with Kerry like the plague.

Blair is, to use American terms, essentially a neocon; and he has a few acolytes in the party, but most of allegedly "new" Labour is still leftish. There's been something of a faustian pact between the party and Blair, which can be paraphrased as "Shut up and I'll get you elected."

The thing about neocons in British politics is that no party has a monopoly on this particular brand of dangerously misguded soul:

(notable) Labour neocons: Tony Blair, Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Alan Milburn

(notable) Tory neocons: David Davis, Nicholas Soames

What are the principles that guide a neocon, then?

Right. I'll try that again.

"Neocon" is as much a valid political label as it is a term of abuse hurled by "paeloconservatives", ie, people with proper conservative ideas (I regard myself as a liberal, in the classical (British, Gladstonian) sense, and the Conservatives as the most liberal of the British political parties, FWIW) at people giving conservatism a bad name.

WikiPedia has a reasonable article on most of the traits shared by neocons.

It's worth pointing out that Bush won't talk to Michael Howard at the moment.

That may be because he's not important enough to waste time on...

FWIW in the general context of the post, as a LibDem shading to Green voter I think high taxes are perfectly acceptable for decent public services, but that doesn't mean the current services couldn't be improved without putting more money in. Which is rather a copout, so perhaps it's a good thing nobody I support has a chance in hell of ending up in government. :)

I think that sounds like an entirely sensible position! :)

On the other hand; as I said; I'm an anarcho-communist.

All this talk of Blair 'betraying' people by not being socialist enough is amusing. Blair was only elected with the landslide he had because he proved to the electorate's satisfaction that a Labour government led by him would not be socialist (admittedly most of the vote was anti-Tory, but if he hadn't been acceptable, that is, non-socialist, he might still have won but he'd have been in a much weaker position). The true betrayal of the country would have been to swing to the left: that would have been getting elected on flase principles.

I'd love to see the true-red Labourites get rid of Blzair, install a truly socialist leader... and find themselves unelectable again for a generation, just like the 80s. I suspect even Gordon Brown is a poisoned chalice, as he has been set up so sucessfully as 'the Anti-Blair' that he is associated in the public's mind with old socialist Labour, so he'd have to redo all Blair's work of convincing the public he wasn't really a socialist before they'd elect him, rather than being able to continue Blair's success in making Labour, rather than the Conservatives, the party of generally sane economic policies.

At the moment Blair has lost all the respect I had for him over Iraq with this anti-hunting bill that is pure and simple pandering to the old guard class warriors. For a while there I thought he had principles; I thought that he was willing to do the right thing even if it was unpopular. But now the old focus-group Blair has come back.