Photo: David Cheskin/PA
So many parties are lurching to the right these days it's hard to keep up. The Liberal Democrats are now the "Orange Tories" according to the Daily Mirror, while in the Guardian, Labour's Peter Hain accuses the party of grabbing a "nestful of shiny rightwing policies" to woo wavering Tory voters.
Scratch the surface of the Lib Dems, says the Mirror, "and you'll find a party that supports privatisation, wants to tear down the NHS and whose proposed economic reforms would hurt Britain's very poor". Lurching even further to the right, meanwhile, is the Conservatives' new deregulation spokesman, John Redwood, who uses an interview in the Financial Times to signal a much harder Tory line on Europe.
The Eurosceptic Mr Redwood says the party is preparing a "renegotiation package" to present to Brussels when it comes to power. This will demand a return to the kind of relationship Britain enjoyed with the EU when it "originally joined" in 1973.
Scary stuff indeed. So are the tectonic plates of British politics really shifting rightwards?
The Lib Dems insist not. Its election coordinator, Lord Razzall, wearily told reporters this morning that the "whole concept of left/right is a throwback to the communist/capitalist debate". Some of our policies would have traditionally been seen as rightwing, he added, while others would be viewed as leftwing. In that he's right. Although the party is endorsing a more rightwing platform this week – particularly its proposals to cut back government spending and get tough on law and order – it's hardly making a leap stage right.
Its efforts to cost its spending pledges are rather an injection of much needed rigour into its traditionally flaky policy-making process. The party's "young turks" – 61-year old Treasury spokesman Vince Cable and his deputy David Laws – are simply trying to close off Labour and the Tories' lines of attack.
The Conservatives are frightened of a different enemy. The rise of the UK Independence party terrifies them. Imperilling as it does, their chances of winning dozens of marginal Labour seats - Ukip only need to take a few thousand votes in each to scuppers their chances. Ukip's triumph in June's European elections explains the return of Mr Redwood to the shadow cabinet, in a role in which he can influence almost every part of the Tories' manifesto. While the Lib Dems are not moving rightwards, the Tories certainly seem to be, particularly in a more Eurosceptic direction.
