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 . . .

I can see only civil partnerships and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill here (and related Tory embarrassment). I am sure we could find example like this in any administration, as we could find collusion in torture, removal of civil rights, expansion of police powers, prosecuting illegal wars and so on.

My own view of New Labour is of a highly collectivist, controlling, illiberal, authoritarian, statist party, with their, seemingly never ending, assault on our freedoms as their own embodiment of social conservatism.

We could get overly dramatic and do the whole Orwelain, police/surveillance state thing, but even without going down that route it's not controversial to say that New Labour have constructed the most authoritarian state since Word War II.