Are the Tories the New Lib/Dems

I know it sounds a dumb question. But hear me out.

In the past, what 18 months ago most people outside the Lib Dems were utterly confused as to what they were for. We knew they were for dodgy bar graphs in local election leaflets. We knew they stood for 'Winning here' but we didn't know what it was they were 'winning ' for.

They were pro-European (apart from a few down in the West Country who knew that was a loser at the polls down there). They were for civil liberties in a general way, but supported a whole range of anti-liberal ideas like the smoking ban.

They were free market economists, except when they were fighting inner city seats when they were re-distributive socialists like Simon Hughes.

If they were for anything it was for finding out what their local community wanted and appropriating it as policy. This of course lead them in to all sorts of contradictions but it didn't matter, after all they were nowhere near power.

The Tories meanwhile, well we knew what they were for. Enterprise, business, self reliance and all that sort of stuff. Often caricatured as uncaring they were a party of the independent underdog against organised interests.

But today, who knows. With U-turn after U-turn it is becoming impossible to get a handle on them. Eurosceptic, but not. Pro-enterprise, but in favour of swinging green related policies, in favour of a range of civil libertarian issues, but supporters of greater and greater use of CCTV. Faster on the motorways, slower in towns. Its a dogs breakfast.

Listening to the policy statements and speeches at the conference it is as bad as the Lib/Dems of yore.

Each Cabinet Minister seems to have been set the task of buttering up a different section of society, often in wildly contradictory ways that to be honest I cannot make head or tail of what they are for.

I half expect 'In Touch' leaflets to start including those bar graphs.