The Tory Manifesto

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A few things stand out to me, from the perspective of the US. The first is the Conservative Party's full-throated defense of socialized medicine, a system that makes Obamacare look like a Tea Party project:

"We are the party of the National Health Service today because we not only back the values of the NHS, we back its funding and we have a vision for its future."

My italics. Those values are collectivist healthcare delivered, for the most part, to everyone free at point of access via general taxation in government-owned and run hospitals and government-employed doctors. Then this piece of modest fiscal realism:

Bringing forward the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.

Still not enough, but at least they're prepping for the generational crunch. And the principal difference with Labour?

Slightly more emphasis on individual responsibility and the need to protect and enhance civil society rather than the state. Slightly more emphasis on tackling the debt through spending cuts than Labour. They also back high-speed trains, rewarding marriage in the tax system and non-carbon energy. They leave abortion rights to individual lawmakers' conscience and favor civil equality for gays and gay couples in relationship law, and military service.

Obama could easily be a Tory leader in Britain.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan