General Election 2010

How are they (the New Labour party) less socially conservative ? Serious question.

Well, this comes as a bit of a shock - I prefer to criticise Labour, so I don't have a fund of references in their defence. Still, here goes:

NL introduced civil partnerships for homosexual couples in 2004. The Tories want to introduce tax breaks for heterosexual married couples. Section 28 was introduced by the Tories in 1988 and supported by them up until 2003 (though Cameron formally apologised for the policy last year). The Shadow Home Secretary suggested as recently as April that B&B's should be allowed to turn away gay couples. Cameron allows his MEPs free votes on legislation which challenges LGBT lifestyles. Cameron suggested in a recent interview with The Catholic Herald that he would be in favour if reducing the upper limit on abortions from 24 weeks to 22 or 20 weeks in light of recent medical advances (Ben Goldacre wrote about why this is bollocks some time ago), as well as preventing people from seeking assisted suicide. Labour tabled the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in 2008 and had to allow a free vote on the key issues, thanks to an internal Catholic rebellion. The Tories took advantage of the controversy to table amendments to abortion law at the same time and most prominent Tories, including Cameron, were in favour of a reduction. During the passage of the same bill, Cameron and his party voted against amendments that would have given lesbian couples the right to IVF treatment.

Those are just examples culled from the last few years' headlines and a quick trawl through theyworkforyou. Obviously I can't prove a negative, so it will fall to someone less partisan to point out how equally socially conservative Labour are.

*See next bit

I used an example to demonstrate what conservative values are, and how, although they may not be policy issues, they are the things which a conservative is likely to believe (that is, these are things which the people who may be running the country, believe). You argued many New Labour members have similar views. I don't disagree. New Labour, however, is not a conservative party. Their members do not join New Labour because they are self-described "Conservatives." Why they join, or what the party is, is not the point of discussion. This issue was based around one person asking why there is a base level of distrust towards the Conservative party. My argument was that this is because they are a conservative party.

From this, I believe, you argue this is an invalid point because many people in other parties also believe in the same thing.

+1

The concern is that, while Labour may be full of religious headbangers, it's a "broad church" (geddit?) and I don't think its policies are pushed in any one direction by religion. Blair wasn't just a Christian - he was a bit Protestant, a bit Catholic, a bit New Age, all forget-rationality-just-go-with-your-"convictions". They have Opus Dei, Islam, Christians, and lots of former Trots, with no religion.

Labour pushed Faith Schools as a great thing, but that was one of many bits of tinkering that they did to the education system, and was more influenced by the New Labour ideology that "other people do it better" (be that the private sector, the Church, whoever).

Although I haven't seen any data, I would be willing to bet quite a lot of money on either of the following two statements: 1) the Conservative have more self-identified religious members 1a) either in the party as a whole or 1b) in parliament than Labour; 2) of their religious members, a greater proportion of them are Christians, of some denomination, than Labour.

Traditional Tory Values are a good fit with Traditional Religious Values. Let's look again at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, because it's instructive. This was introduced and guided through parliament by Labour - it was a Labour bill. It didn't do anything too controversial, it was mostly an update of a previous bill. A small number of Catholic Labour MPs threatened a rebellion and parts of the Bill were put to a free vote. One of these changes was an amendment to the original language of the 1990 act, changing "the need of that child [produced by IVF] for a father" to "the need of that child for supportive parenting", i.e. allowing lesbian couples access to IVF.
Cameron voted with his party on two failed amendments: changing "a father" to "a father and a mother", and changing "a father" to "supportive parenting and a father or male role model". These changes were successfully opposed in a free vote, with about 92% of the Tories (including Cameron, in both votes) in favour of a change that still excluded lesbian parents and 82% of Labour opposing the suggested amendments.