Order order!
If Old Timer wants to make a complete fool of himself with his ludicrous claims that there's no difference between Gordon Brown's policies and those of Stalin than leave him be.
The fact is that both the Tory party and Labour aim to appeal to the middle class, because that is where the most votes are to be found, and therefore the parties' policies become closer day by day. Labour is no longer at the mercy of the trade unions and so have dropped most of their socialist policies. The Conservatives, lead by David Cameron, are no longer presented as the party of small government (though it must be sad that vast numbers of back-benchers are still highly pro-Thatcherism). The real differences in policy are between centralisation and devolution of governance, and the role of the EU. The other key difference is that, while Labour will simply keep tax as it is, the Conservative party will raise the inheritance tax threshold, and therefore cut the tax of the richer members of society, and have talked about freezing tax. Only the Liberal Democrats will reform the tax policy, raising the threshold at which people start paying income tax.
As for the differences in economic policy, the Conservative party, who originally championed the need for massive spending cuts, itself realised what a disaster any cuts to essential services will be, and swept them under the carpet. Labour policy seems to be one of "maintain spending levels" without any bold action, which seems to be producing results, though slower than in countries were they had more of an economic stimulus. The two facts are, whichever party gets in there will be spending cuts, cuts which should have been made long ago, and that any party which chooses cuts to essential services without reformation is invoking a disaster on Britain.
At the end of the day, the question is, who is best prepared to deliver the changes? I present to you, Alistair Darling, of Labour, who's simply not done enough so far; George Osborne with a degree in history, who can't be straight with us as to what on the agenda in terms of cuts; or Vince Cable, with a PHD in economics, who has detailed where he thinks cuts can be made without too adverse an effect on the economy, and would call for democratic debate on where cuts are best made.
