Quote:
Originally Posted by merrylander
I would think that the British Conservative Party is (or was) more toward center than the GOP. The Labour party under Atlee was definitely left of the Dems, but has swung more toward center of late.
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Liberal Democrats are a mix of the old Liberal party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), itself a splinter group that split away from the Labor party to try to occupy the center ground in 1981. They joined forces with the Liberal party in 1988. The Conservatives under John Major (Margarette Thatcher came in on a wave in 1979 but was getting less and less popular so the Conservitaves dumped her) lost the next General Election and as the Labor party having moved from left to center and changed its name to New Labor, we ended up with that grin of a stick, Tony Blair. Blair was eventually replaced as Prime Minister by Gordon Brown. He clung to power by his fingernails but the next General Election was due. No party had an overall majority so the Tories (lead by a bunch of ex public school millionaires) made an alliance with the Lib Dems to form the first U.K. coalition government since WW2. In theory, as they hold the balance of power the Lib Dems have a lot of influence but in practice they know damn well that if they side with Labor and force another general election, there's every chance they'll sink without trace.
The Conservatives want to sign out of the European Court of Human Rights and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. This is dead against what the Lib Dems stand for so, will David Cameron risk the coalition falling apart by sticking with his pre-election promise of a referendum? He's already tried to wriggle out of it by saying that it was a Conservative promise, not binding on a coalition government.
The problem is that every time the European Court does something deeply unpopular (like trying to force the U.K. to let prisoners vote in General Elections), the Tories get prodded to keep to their word and hold a referendum.
We live in interesting times....................