The run-up to Tony blair's next term has begun, and our erstwhile politicos seem to going all out for surrealism this time.

First up we have Labour. While the Prime Minister and chancellor work flat out to destroy any mistaken impressions of party uníty by scrapping over the leadership, they've also confirmed the complete abandonment of any socialist principles bywelcoming a former Thatcherite minister into their ranks. One of his reasons for joining was a commitment to the abolition of free education.

The Tories are doing a good impression of falling apart. In the space of a week, they've lost an MP to Labour, a senior aide to the Lib Dems, and two councillors to UKIP. In a desperate battle against irrelevancy, they've fallen back on that old Tory favourite - tax cuts. Apparently, there's 35 billion in public money they can conjure up, and it only requires sacking quarter of a million civil servants.

The Lib Dems, meanwhile, are daring to propose the forbidden topic of paying for public services bytaxing rich people more, unless they happen to be speaking to Tory voters at the time. Who knows, maybe they'll actually grab second place - but then that's what everyone thought in the 80s.

UKIP seem determined to entertain us all. While Kilroy-Silk considers setting up a new party called Veritas, and the party leadership insists he quits, their biggest funder wants to appoint him party leader.

So, thoughts? Does anyone care about our election, fellow Brits included?My only hope is at least one minister loses their seat to Plaid Cymru or the SNP (or the SSP but I'm being realistic).[/url]

The abolition of free education?? What like, for primary and secondary school?

What is surrealist about the Lib Dems? Suggesting tax rises is unusual, because talking about what you want to spend the money on is more popular then where you want to get it from, but given that more and more services gets cut down, voting for someone who wants to rise taxes starts to sound good.

Kea - no, just for further education. Our supposed left-wing party got rid of it, and so the supposed right-wing party started preaching in it's defence, as it was becoming difficult to find a policy that distinguished the two.

arcosh - what's surreal is a party traditionally opposed to tax rises suddenly supporting them to steal votes from a party that was traditionally in favour of massive taxes on the rich but has abandoned all its traditional policies.

The Lib Dems, and prior to that, the Liberal / SDP alliance have proposed tax increases to "actually pay for public services" at every election since 1983, if memory serves... to clarify, that's increases in Income taxes, so people actually notice, rather than increases in duties, VAT and other "as you spend" taxes...

IMHO, the Lib Dems are currently the most Left Wing "serious political party" in the UK...

kinkajou - the Alliance's 1983 manifesto promised the option of an emergency 'inflation tax' to prevent big wage increases, but apart from that was against tax rises. In 1987 they made a few tentative and vague proposals, but it's only recently they've started seriously proposing a significant tax rise on top earners. You can read all their manifestos here if you really want.

Surely you mean higher education? Further education (A-levels and such) is still free, for now at least.

I vague remeber to have read that LibDems have proposed tax rises in a past election. It was an Austrian newspaper and propably that were not actually based on manifestos but also on what some person have said somewhere. I think that was 2001 election but i am not sure.

Cutting taxes to make people happy does not seem to work anymore anyway. Last year the Austrian goverment did cut taxes and completly botched the public relations part. A survey afterwards had shown that quite a large part of the population believed that they have less money after the tax cuts, propably because they just can't believe that they'd be better off after some reform. Also very surreal.

I did indeed mean higher education. Bah.

I doff my cap to you sir... will read manifestos when time permits!

In further news, a report in the paper today suggested that Ebglish Partnérships' housing budget is being slanted to focus on funding marginal seats in the South East as part of Labour's election campaign, ignóring traditionál labour areas in the North and Midlands. Given that I've always lived in 'safe' labour seats, and yet one nów has a Lib Dem controlled council and the other an independent controlled council - this could be a very bad idea.

It appears the Tories have decided to play their other favourite card - unrestrained racism. They've proposed to withdraw from the UN Convention on Refugees so we can impose a quota setting out a maximim number of refugees.

The scary thing is, especially with UKIP busy making fools out of themselves, this idiocy might just win them a few votes.

Could the tactic behind that be that Labour tries to become the only large party and thus they try to reduce the tories and don't care for votes lost to smaller parties? Or that Labour assumes that they can't hold an absolute majority on the long run anyway and so are interested in having multiple possible coalition partners that are different enough that they would'nt ally against Labour?

Doubtful. The only party likely to win those Northern seats is the Liberal Democrats, mostly because of our ridiculous electoral system. If the Tories collapse, the Lib Dems will still be a major opposition party. Also because of our electoral system, coalitions aren't a major part of our political life. We haven't had one since World War II, and have always had a single party majority since, except for 8 months in 1974. Labour tried to govern as a minority party, and failed miserably. Also, if a coalition did become a prospect, the Tories and Lib Dems would be quite willing to ally. Although with current party leaders, I will admit a Lib-Lab coalition is more likely.

Ok, I stand corrected. The Lib Dems have announced they wouldn't consider a coalition with a Labour party this right-wing, which presumably rules out a coalition with the Tories as well.