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.