Airstrip One

Globalising Parties

What's so wrong with global political parties they ask Samizdata. Nothing at all.

This is perhaps the same thinking that got the Conservatives into the European People's Party. "We both hate the Socialists so let's join the Christian Democrats. What difference can there be"?

Of course different nations face different questions, and parties supply different bundles of answers. Thus the Labour Party in Britain was (until the 1980s) fairly staunchly pro-NATO and sceptical about the free market, while the Italian Communists were roughly opposite.

Of course where the Samizdata people see no real difference is between the problems addressed by the Conservatives and Republicans - and they would be backed by the present leadership of the Conservative Party. This may be one of the reasons why the polls are so dire at the moment.