Earlier this week, Tony Blair stated that 'policy cross-dressing is rampant and a feature of modern politics that will stay'. For anyone observing politics in UK, NZ, or anywhere he was essentially stating the obvious - but it was interesting to see him admitting it, if not celebrating it. If only Helen Clark and Don Brash were so honest! The Guardian ran a fairly good comment by left-Labourite Neal Lawson, in which he sums up the cross dress as being due to the all-party consensus on economic neoliberalism:
Cross-dressing has taken root not because ideological politics is dead but because one political ideology, neo-liberalism, has become dominant. All three parties sign up to its basic demands for free markets and free enterprise. In our crippling first-past-the-post electoral system this encourages party leaders, who can take their core supporters for granted, to leapfrog into enemy territory to pick up new votes. Blair raided the right, now Cameron raids the acres of space to the left of New Labour that most of the public occupy. It is the politics of the madhouse that drives voters away from its naked cynicism and leads to the Labour party's losing over half its membership.
