User blog comment:Centrist16/SOMETHING EVERYONE MUST KNOW/@comment-3398633-20150809140026/@comment-3993996-20150810010826

Viva, to pass laws in the UK you need a governing majority. At least 326 MP's must vote in favour/not in favour for a bill to be passed. So, prior to 2015, Labour could only put 256 votes into a bill. They ad influence, but less of that of the Tories. To put this into a hypothetical scenario, imagine a welfare reform bill is being proposed. Labour along with the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Alliance, SLDP, Respect and the Greens vote against the bill meaning 271 votes are against the bill. The Tories, UKIP, and the DUP vote for it meaning 312 votes favour the bill. The Liberal Democrats are split, with 28 voting for the bill and 28 against. This still results in the bill being passed, meaning that at the end of the day the centrist/flip-flopping nature of the Lib Dems were the deciding factor, not Labour. Whilst Labour had more power then they do now, ultimately bills were diluted not to court Labour votes but Lib Dem ones. Even if the Tories were courting Labour votes they would be from Blairites, and not from the left wing of the party meaning that any influence Labour had would be as you put it from the Liz Kendells of the party, not the Jeremy Corbyn's (who could hardly push policy in the Blair years). In the 2015 general election only 0.8% more voters voted for Conservative - more people actually voted for smaller parties and Labour then in 2010 (only the Lib Dems saw a drop in % of the vote, largely due to losing the student vote) but due to our FPTP system the Tories won more seats then % of the vote. The Tories in the election run up did make Labour seem more influential then they were which is why despite some of their policies being unpopular they managed to gain seats, leaving the Lib Dems to be massacred. The Tories also with the press on their side did a campaign against the other parties making them all into evil bogeymen of some strip (Labour were presented as the loony left, the SNP secessionist Scottish socialists, and UKIP in Cameron's words "fruitcakes and loonies") who were either razing the country into the ground already or were going to.

Nigel Farage is more of a Euroscpetic then anything else. If the EU didn't allow open boarders then he probably wouldn't mention it. That said, yeah, I see your point and agree that's doesn't encourage economic growth. That said, immigration is not inherent to a capitalist nor socialist system, and in the past both conservatives and labour have encouraged/discouraged it.

Britain has defied the US over wars in the past - Britain never entered Vietnam despite America's pleas in the 1970's. Tony Blair also proved himself to have neoconservative traits intervening in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Even the hawkish Margaret Thatcher only committed British troops to the Falklands War when British territory was actually invaded. Blair had to effectively bypass parliament to go to war, and might have lost the 2005 election if the opposition wasn't so hapless.

I'm aware libertarianism isn't in the mainstream in the USA, but it still exists and has more of a following then the American socialist movement for example (or at least from what I have seen of it). I would also say Obama/Romney care is not nearly as "left wing" as the German/French/Canadian/British healthcare systems. Nevertheless the right in America have made opposition to universal healthcare part of their ideology now I guess.

"Greece never had a history of being economically responsible as an independent state" - well, Greece was a state before socialism took root there. In all fairness, socialist policy doesn't include tax evasion which most socialists are against which was one of the major reasons why Greece couldn't pay for anything (having a welfare state is fine as long as you have citizens paying the taxes to keep it up).