Michael Howard is absolutely right on asylum: it would have been better if we’d refused to let his ancestors into the country and then they’d died in the Holocaust. Loathsome bastard.
Ignore Backing Blair, fab though Tim Ireland is: the Tories really could win this. Then they’d give all our money to the rich and senile (why the fuck should a well-off old person with a quarter-million-pound house that they bought for a fiver escape paying their share?), lock us all up, and do even more racist shit-stirring than the current lot.
Obviously, if a Liberal has a chance of winning your seat, you should vote for them. But don’t make the mistake of assuming the centre-right and the extreme-right parties are the same. The American left did that in 2000, and that really didn’t work out too well.
Update: Ryan has quite a nice quote on the same topic: "anyone who votes Tory because Tim Ireland tells them to deserves their own personal Tory government, governing them alone".
Updated update: Stumbling & Mumbling rips apart the daft Tory pensioner plans.
Bah! There’s are clear differences between even New Labour and the Tories that just don’t exist between Democrats and Republicans – most particularly, Labour’s integration (and growth from) the labour movement.
As long as the Left in the US tags along with voting Democrat no matter how bad, there’s no reason for the Democrats ever to improve and still less opportunity for a progressive Left to develop. Take Hillary Clinton’s gyrations on abortion rights, for instance; the idea that "liberal" Democratic politicians can steal the Republicans’ clothes should have been killed off by the 2004 election, but without an independent left voice, the same ghastly leadership asserts itself.
Whilst we’re on letting the Tories in: my guess is it ain’t going to happen. But look at where their support has come from – not Labour, but the Lib Dems. Sudden Right tack from the Lib Dems imminent?