The political circus here in the UK is in a strange mood. There's no legislation pending but, with the major party conferences looming and important supporters to be massaged, people are coming out with position papers right left and centre.

not important in themselves, but they herald where the fights are going to be.

Labour are beginning to realise that NuLab neoliberalism has led them into the wasteland and are trying to turn the ship around into a more modern leftward direction. However the undead, clinging to the money-bloated corpses of Blair and Mandelson, refuse to be staked and so there could well be some interesting squabbles this autumn.

The Tories failed to achieve an electoral majority despite facing the wholly despised and ineffectual Gordon Brown, so naturally the solution is to follow the republican party with policies that are even more raw meat conservative. Cameron is trying to make some running on this but is widely felt by the right of the party to be a liability and insufficiently fevered in his mania to hurt the poor and disadvantaged. Sadly the fights are unlikely to be public, but there will be a lot of right wing dog whistling going on as various factions try to raise their visibility.

The LibDems. What to say ? Most of that faction of the party which might have raised objections to the rightward drift of the coalition have left in disgust, leaving behind a conservative-lite party which has little ideological view other than to give mildly critical support to actual conservative policies

keep to the Fen Causeway