Are the Conservatives conservative?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you do not understand the rather large ideological differences between Labour and the Conservatives (which are actually greater than between the Democrats and the Republicans), then you are in no position to make any claims about British politics.

Interesting fact about British politics; whenever a new party takes office, a very high proportion of the policies of the previous government are either reversed or modified to be unrecognizable. This doesn't always happen very quickly, but with the exception of the incoming Conservative government of 1951, it always happens (and even in '51 the Tories denationalised Iron and Steel). It happend in 1997 (the changes to economic development, welfare & etc policy was especially stark, btw) and it will happen whenever the Tories next get a majority in the Commons.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It seems evident to me that history is repeating itself in British politics.  In the 1980's, Labour were consistently defeated for being far too left-wing, right up until they got themselves a shiny new leader who pretty much abandoned many of the key principles of the party (i.e. socialism) and aimed for the middle ground instead.

No, it didn't happen like that at all. What actually happend was far more complicated and part of a longrunning internal civil war (which began right after the 1970 defeat). But that's certainly what the New Right and Hard Left in the Party like to pretend happend...

Warning: the following is not neutral and does not pretend to be... people from other wings of the party would doubtless disagree over much of it. Regardless...

Basically: following the 1979 defeat, the leftwing grassroots of the party grew in power and were able to pass a load of very leftwing motions at the 1980 Conference. Callaghan resigned as leader because of this (note that at this point Labour were probably heading for victory in the next General Election... that irony is still quite painful...), leftwing academic Michael Foot (a very clever man, but a dire leader and with no ability to connect with the public whatsoever) was elected leader over rightwing former Chancellor Denis Healey, the civl war broke out in earnest, was extremely messy (I can go into details if you want...), the liberal Right broke off and formed the SDP, the Falklands happend, Labour got crushed in the '83 elections and Foot resigned. He was replaced by Kinnock (on the left, but more old left than new left) who spent his time as leader (which lasted for almost a decade) trying to shift the party back to where it had been before 1980 (both in terms of policy and electoral appeal), and trying to kill of the Trotskyite sh*ts who had been infiltrating the party (with disturbing success in some areas) since the late '70's. You also had the beginnings of the rebranding of the party during this period; the red rose got adopted as the new logo and so on.
After Kinnock resigned as leader, the new leader (John Smith) did a lot to moderate party policy and to change party rules and organisation. Had he not died suddenly, Labour would still have won a landslide in 1997.
There never was any need for The Almighty And Wonderful Dear Leader And Clinton Clone, and Blair didn't actually change the party much, at least not in a postive way.
What happend after Blair took over was a load of entirely cosmetic changes, including the entirely symbolic battle over the rewriting of Clause IV of the Party Constitution (which committed Labour to public ownership. In theory. Up until Gaitskell tried to get rid of it in the early '60's, it had never been of any real importance (the nationalizations of the '40's were not done for ideological reasons), and even after then it only had a link to proposed Labour policy in one General Election; 1983), which, contrary to the claims of the Hard Left, did not mark a formal ditching of Socialism (the first line of the new Clause IV reads: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party") it just meant that the commitment to Socialism become much more vague (bringing us into line with most other European Socialist parties). As it happens, I prefer the old Clause IV, not that it matters much.
Anyways, Blair used to have a great deal of appeal for certain sorts of middle class voters (not anymore o/c) and as it happens, these are exactly the sort of voters that Cameron appeals to (apparently these people will vote for anything that looks shiny and new) and having him as leader helped boost Labour's majorities in '97 and '01, but we would still have won without him.
The negative changes brought by Blair have been greater control by the leadership over the party (nowhere near Tory levels yet o/c; he would never have got away with doing what Howard did to Flight) and a nasty tendency to try to piss off the party that he leads, the result of which has been a sharply declining membership (although even now the state of the party grassroots is better than the Tories and LibDems; not that that says much... 20% of Conservative Associations and 40% of local LibDem parties have less than 100 members per constituency). Membership would have declined anyway (it always does when we're in Government) but not that sharply.
At the moment the Party seems to be swinging back towards the left; the main Hard Left slate won the NEC elections and Jon Cruddas's deputy leadership campaign has got us on the Soft Left quite excited.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

IMO the LibDems aren't far off being a coalition of about three parties (right wing liberals, social liberals (not a brilliant phrase, but the most accurate I can think of) and people that are perhaps best thought of as agrarians) held together by the FPTP electoral system. It happens that the right wing liberals are in the ascendancy at the moment, after being out in the cold for quite a long time.
If the electoral system ever gets round to changing, we'll probably see one of those groups splitting off from the main party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, how mmany of the labour intake and MPs during these 3 cycles support collective ownership of the means of production?

In theory quite a few, probably. More so (as a %) in the '05 intake, than '01 or '97.
The losses in '05 tended to be on the right of the party (not always o/c, but usually).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Al, I'm not as ignorant of British politics as you think I am.

Actually, I don't think you're ignorant of British politics. If I thought that you were ignorant, I'd have given the sort of short answers I give to Goldie, instead of typing out that long thing over there.

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Most accounts of what happend in the '80's are much longer and much more complicated than that
I even managed to avoid mentioning the disputed results of the Deputy Leadership contest of '81!

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In parts yes, in parts no.

This would be the key difference:

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Essentially my argument is that the nessessary changes to the party had happend before the shiny new leader came along, and that the party would have won the next election anyway. What the shiny new leader was good at, was winning over the votes of certain groups of people who would otherwise have never thought about voting Labour. These people, mostly, stopped voting Labour in 2005...

...but I don't doubt that Cameron is trying to do what Blair was seen to have done in the early '90's (the whole shiny, new, modern etc, leader thing).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(and the party are in a statistical tie when it comes to best at managing the NHS)

That's only because the negative campaign waged by the media has reduced the figures for all parties to below 30% in most polls. It's one thing to be tied when it's around 40/40, quite another when it's around 27/27 or so.
I still find it amusing that most people think that their local hospitals have been improving, while also thinking that the opposite is the case everywhere else...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You on the soft left too Al?

Yep

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I think that the Hard Left did so well (IIRC their successful candidates came first, second, third and fourth on the ballot) was down to a mix of protest voting and a low turnout (both things are o/c significant in their own way).