General Election 2010

I agree that the actual result in the real world is important, but I think you are deliberately or otherwise attacking a straw man. The argument I was making is that, in the context of all of their policies, Labour is less susceptible to religious influence than the Conservative party. Probably.

It's no straw man, my view is that Labour is no more free from religion than the Conservatives. I have stated my reasons and given examples.

Agreed, but you are trying to argue about the comparison between the two parties without actually attempting to quantify the degree to which both are religious / susceptible to religious influence. And, despite being a committed athiest, I'm wary of ascribing all of the blame for the Iraq war to Tony's faith.

There is your straw man - I have not ascribed all of the blame for the Iraq war to Tony's faith.

On the subject of '[not] attempting to quantify the degree to which both are religious / susceptible to religious influence' - I have said already my interest is in actual real world results, rather than a suspected or supposed ideological bent of a certain party.

We can suppose party A is ideologically predisposed to killing kittens, and then watch party B kill more kittens than any government in history - and there will always be people telling us that 'sure party B killed a load of kittens, but it was for very different reasons . . . . '

So . . . . putting my shit analogy aside, my point remains, if we pluck out a nutter from the Tories as an example of latent unhinged religiosity (as a partisan claim), then I would argue that New Labour is equally steeped in this kind of shit.

Authoritarianism != conservatism, however much we may dislike both.

Authoritarianism = statism = New Labour.