would you ever vote conservative?

matt b said:

i also disagree that "civil liberties and personal freedoms are absolutely core conservative values"- i can't think of a single example of this link.

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Well, there's the free market for one, but come on, the Left has throughout history been the site of government intervention in the affairs of its citizens, of higher taxes to pay for greater bureaucratic mechanisms, of regulation, of emphasising groups over individuals. The conservative emphasis on lower taxation, offset by greater efficiency in public services, to pick one example is a conservative value based on personal freedom (the freedom to spend your money how you want) over state intervention.

matt b said:

'kin ell! you buy the spin! cameron (like most politicians) is after power and will say owt to get in. i guarantee that all his softly softly mr nice guy platitudes will be dumped the moment he gets into powerr (heaven forfend).

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For the moment, yes I do. I prefer his spin to anyone else's (I have no hard evidence not to), and I'd like to see him in power so we can hold him accountable for some of the (very attractive) promises he's making. He's not going to come good on them all, but at the very least he's promsing things that I agree with and want to see happen. At the moment I can't see anything I even want to see happen come out of Blair's mouth.

Rambler said:

even if the left-right divide has become meaningless in modern politics

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Actually, I did one of those political spectrum tests; on a left-right axis I'm pretty much dead centre, but on the authoritarian/libertarian axis I was a long way off to the libertarian end, and it's those things that make it impossible for me to vote for this Labour government (and, as it happens, Howard's conservatives).

Rambler said:

Well, there's the free market for one

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which is a theoretical construct and does not exist. the rights' claims about the free market are guff too- see george w.'s policy on US steel and the selling of ports.

Rambler said:

but come on, the Left has throughout history been the site of government intervention in the affairs of its citizens, of higher taxes to pay for greater bureaucratic mechanisms, of regulation, of emphasising groups over individuals.

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well the statist 'left' maybe, but there are plenty of examples of the left doing exactly the opposite of this

Rambler said:

The conservative emphasis on lower taxation, offset by greater efficiency in public services, to pick one example is a conservative value based on personal freedom (the freedom to spend your money how you want) over state intervention.

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what does 'efficiency' mean? it (again) is an ideological and essentially meaningless term in this context: it means privatisation.

my freedom is not solely focussed on my ability to spend money freely. what about my freedom to get free health care, have a liveable environment etc?

such simplistic arguments allow political class to control the debate, which of course they want.

Rambler said:

For the moment, yes I do. I prefer his spin to anyone else's (I have no hard evidence not to), and I'd like to see him in power so we can hold him accountable for some of the (very attractive) promises he's making.

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'we' cannot hold politicians to account very often and he's not promising anything at all. he's set up lots of focus groups with nice sounding names, the posh arse.

Rambler said:

At the moment I can't see anything I even want to see happen come out of Blair's mouth.

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oh i can- william hurts' alien would be good

Rambler said:

Actually, I did one of those political spectrum tests; on a left-right axis I'm pretty much dead centre, but on the authoritarian/libertarian axis I was a long way off to the libertarian end

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well, your 1/2 way there

matt b said:

which is a theoretical construct and does not exist. the rights' claims about the free market are guff too- see george w.'s policy on US steel and the selling of ports.

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Don't be naughty - the question is 'would you vote conservative', not 'would you vote Bush' (and, er, no I wouldn't).

[QUOTE}well the statist 'left' maybe, but there are plenty of examples of the left doing exactly the opposite of this[/QUOTE]

Alright, maybe, but none of them are currently on the menu for the next general election.

what does 'efficiency' mean? it (again) is an ideological and essentially meaningless term in this context: it means privatisation.

my freedom is not solely focussed on my ability to spend money freely. what about my freedom to get free health care, have a liveable environment etc?

such simplistic arguments allow political class to control the debate, which of course they want.

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I understand what you mean by the second half of what you say, Matt, but I don't agree with the first half - public service efficiency does not equal privatisation. It means a certain degree of accountability to your paymasters - in the case of the NHS (which if you've read the 'what ails you' thread, you'll have guessed that I'm an enormous beneficiary of) this means accountability to those of us who fund the thing through our taxes. At the moment, I strongly believe that we don't get value for money, and what is more the whole system is completely hamstrung by over-bureaucracy. I think most doctors would agree with that. The same goes for education - Labour's obsession with arbitary quotas for the sake of creating homogenous bands of people, rather than educating individuals according to their needs is killing the higher and further education system in this country.

So, having paid for doctors, teachers and lecturers, why are they spending more of their time filling paperwork to meet government 'standards' than they are treating and teaching people? I do believe it's possible to go some way to fixing this problem, and I don't believe it has to be done through privatisation.

And anyway, how is Labour's drive to PFI everything in sight a better alternative? I'll emphasise again, my primary motivation for voting in the next General Election will be to get Labour out; the Tories are best placed to do so, and it so happens that I'm starting to agree with them on a lot of things as well. For the first time a political party is actually courting my point of view, and I admit I like that.

oh i can- william hurts' alien would be good

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Hahaha!

Big up Rambler for sheer chutzpah in defending Cameron on Dissensus!

New Labour is the biggest missed opportunity in modern politics. (Note that I am not making a strict leftist analysis here -- I'm sure Eden would totally disagree with what I've just said . Anyway, back to the bourgeois position...)

They've chucked unfeasible amounts of money at the NHS and have achieved very little. They've spent quite a bit more on education and achieved nothing. With pensions they totally shied away from the issue, same with green / environmental issues -- in fact Prescott has done more damage to environmental causes in the last six months than the Tories did in ten years by totally skewering green building regulations while accelerating new building and destroying green building incentives. PFI is not a bad idea at its core but it's been executed in the most apallingly wrong-headed way imaginable, as the Economist has documented many times.

It's a complete mess buoyed up by a strong economy that was largely the creation of Ken Clarke. I don't trust Blair and I think he's a war criminal, but I do think he's a very talented politician; but he doesn't really know what he's doing. I trust Gordon Brown even less -- I think he's an arsehole who's on the verge of being unhinged.

Meanwhile the Lib Dems are a useless bunch of slimey, lying tossers with one or two excellent people who tend to quit in disgust after a few years, like my recently ex-local MP. And as for the left... Christ. Talk about turning back-biting into a career. I wouldn't trust Respect / the SWP as far as I could throw them. (Others, like Hackney Independent, are OK but the British left is pretty uninspiring.)

Which leaves the Tories. Cameron is trying to do a Blair -- grabbing the middle ground while doing all he can to alienate the atavistic extremes. If he were elected it's just about possible he might do more good than harm in a few areas. Pensions and the NHS are trying to do things they were never designed to do and which no economy can afford; maybe Cameron will be able to say the emperor has no clothes. He has given no indication he will do so, quite the reverse in fact, and in any event, you just know the Tories will be off with the silverware the minute they're in power.

So as to would I vote Tory, the answer is

NO

FUCKING

WAY

But then who would (other than Rambler!)?

To me the interesting thing -- and I mean "interesting" as a matter of sport, not of politics -- is whether Cameron would beat Brown. The numbers say not, but I simply cannot envisage people voting for him. Look at his eyes -- it's "Helter Skelter!" Cameron is ticking all the right boxes for the politically unaligned. I'd put money on him and may actually do so -- but the odds are short already.

"my freedom is not solely focussed on my ability to spend money freely. what about my freedom to get free health care, have a liveable environment etc?"

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No, but that is one freedom which the Right traditionally supports is what you asked him to give you right?
I think it's unhelpful to have a complete knee-jerk response to the idea of voting Tory if it prevents you analysing the main parties' respective policies properly. This Labour Government has been very restrictive of freedoms when you consider that (off the top of my head) they've banned fox hunting and smoking in public, they wanted to extend the amount of time you could hold a suspect without charge and they are pushing through ID cards.
I think it's fair to say that the Conservatives could argue that they are more libertarian party than Labour at present although I personally don't think that that is enough to swing my vote.

The problem with the Iraq war as a decision maker for voters is that the Tories are even more natural supporters of the US than Blair is, they offered no opposition whatsoever so it seemed that there was no party we could vote for that had any chance of getting in to power that would have acted differently.

IdleRich said:

This Labour Government has been very restrictive of freedoms when you consider that (off the top of my head) they've banned fox hunting and smoking in public

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Bollocks Rich. Neither of these are restrictions on freedom. If you think that people have a "right" to spread cancer and lung disease to non-smokers then you're talking gash as far as I'm concerned.

IdleRich said:

they wanted to extend the amount of time you could hold a suspect without charge and they are pushing through ID cards.

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That's more like it

"Bollocks Rich. Neither of these are restrictions on freedom. If you think that people have a "right" to spread cancer and lung disease to non-smokers then you're talking gash as far as I'm concerned. "

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"That's more like it"

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Well maybe I didn't list them in the right order of importance but they are all anti-libertarian measures and I think that they were a valid example to back-up Rambler's point that the Right may be more libertarian than the Left whether you agree that they are correct to be so or not.
(Personally, although I did argue quite heatedly against the smoking ban I'm beginning to see that what everyone else said about it impacting on other's freedom may actually be right. I still couldn't give a toss either way about foxes though to be honest.)

Rambler said:

Don't be naughty - the question is 'would you vote conservative', not 'would you vote Bush' (and, er, no I wouldn't).

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point taken . BUT (see how big that is?) 'free trade' as currently formulated has nothing to do with equitable trade.

you're taking a position of 'least worse option', no?
personally i can't see any fundamental difference between new labour and cameron's tories

Rambler said:

So, having paid for doctors, teachers and lecturers, why are they spending more of their time filling paperwork to meet government 'standards' than they are treating and teaching people? I do believe it's possible to go some way to fixing this problem, and I don't believe it has to be done through privatisation.

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agreed. but i don't think cameron will do anything different- they are thatcherite policies in the first place.
(and PFI/ PPP are de facto privatisation any how)

Sorry droid, I just don't accept the left's critique of intervention in Kosovo.

But I don't want to derail the thread with an ancient argument

matt b said:

only to give it all to laughing business men.

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exactly. just finished a project in the public sector, the way that no-one is ever held accountable for fuck ups and the blatant waste of public money was absolutely shocking. there are a lot of business people becoming rich on taxpayers cash.

Rambler said:

Well, there's the free market for one, but come on, the Left has throughout history been the site of government intervention in the affairs of its citizens, of higher taxes to pay for greater bureaucratic mechanisms, of regulation, of emphasising groups over individuals. The conservative emphasis on lower taxation, offset by greater efficiency in public services, to pick one example is a conservative value based on personal freedom (the freedom to spend your money how you want) over state intervention.

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at face value maybe - but the real picture is more complex. don't you remember the back to basics campaigns, the attacks on single mothers? that doesn't suggest a party that is dedicated to personal freedom and the individual.

on the authoritarian front, in thatchers reign, to bring up just one example, i remember miners getting their heads stoved in by the police. not the first time they have been overtly politicised to crush a labour movement but certainly marked a new phase in contemporary times, and has only increased over the years.

thing is, its easy to mix up left and right with liberal and authoratarian when they are different things. its perfectly possible to have libertarian left as long as your prepared to knit your own muesili.

if it sounds like i'm defending labour, i'm not. i hate all of them equally.

Droid said "is it OK to vote for a party led by war criminals to keep the Tories out?"

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I reckon it is if you think that the alternative may be worse war criminals. I think that choosing the least worst option is something that you have to do sometimes.
The longer Labour are in power the more they have come to resemble the previous administration, not so much in policies but in closeness to business and so-called sleaze. It makes me wonder if there isn't something drastically and intrinsically wrong with the system in our country. I mean obviously I knew it was far from perfect but it seems to have something fundamentally wrong that means it will corrupt anyone involved. I tend to believe that most (not all) politicians get in to it for the right reasons but once you start compromising your beliefs and being pragmatic at the expense of your ideals it's the thin end of the wedge. Maybe that's just a problem with human nature anyway and no political system can get round it.