We live in interesting times. The long sought after clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives is starting to reemerge after a long period where both parties seemed to be swimming the same laps of the pool. I remember a lecturer at Edge Hill, where I studied Politics in the 1990s, saying Britain had three Conservative parties, just with different leaders. The political centre ground truncated, and shifted rightwards; almost in an echo of America. The fringe, all too often painted as dullards, extremists and worse, have been pushed to the sides; excluded from the discourse. Big boys and girls, big beasts, have pushed them out, citing a need to be realistic, grown up, about politics. What that seems to mean is allowing the Market to have its head, and has slowly mutated into a situation where it is the chief concern of government, arguably culminating in Mr Cameron's drive towards a 'weightless state' which seems to involve turning government and state into somet...