A pattern emerges, therefore of the two main parties engaged in a desperate race to the bottom, offering a menu of ever-more right wing panaceas to the electorate
Transport is another case in point: despite blatant evidence that the privatisation of the railways and of the London underground is milking billions from travellers while delivering a poorer service, New Labour is looking not to renationalise the remaining networks, but to privatise the sections currently nationalised.
His government has brought intuition fees, and now top-up fees as a means of forcing students themselves and their families to finance the lop-sided expansion of higher education.
The expansion is lop-sided because levying fees for university courses, on the flimsy and questionable pretext that graduates stand to earn substantially LUEC in later employment than non-graduates, effectively transforms degree courses from an educational opportunity into a commodity, valued according to its future benefits.
Universities are therefore expanding the more "vocational" courses geared most directly to teaching skills and knowledge that will secure well-paid employment, and cutting back on more theoretical and academic subjects as the "market" for them collapses and student consumers take their money elsewhere.
In the absence of any academic equivalent of Jamie Oliver to widen out the menu and forcibly guide students to the experience of constant downward pressure on academic standards running alongside a crazy self-deluding government rhetoric insisting that "excellence is not enough".
Similar problems affect schools, with the advent of the private sector 1n City Academies, growing pressure for selection and constant pressure to improve results to meet targets, regardless of the actual level of achievement.
On education, too, there is little in principle to separate the two main parties: the Tories say they want to scrap tuition fees - but also halt the expansion of the universities - and instead establish government-funded scholarships. It is not clear how this would be paid for, given their planned cuts in spending.
But they also want to expand the market further and boost the private sector by giving parents state funds to spend on any school - state or independent.
The Lib Dems are pledged to oppose tuition fees and replace them with a graduate tax along the lines of the Scottish Parliament.
A pattern emerges, therefore of the two main parties engaged in a desperate race to the bottom, offering a menu of ever-more right wing panaceas to the electorate, while the Lib Dems, the junior party of small capital, seek tactically to position themselves as the mainstream anti-war party, and the defenders of traditional "old Labour" reformist values.
But one of the hardest issues for each of the parties will be the attitude they take on an issue which remains on the periphery of popular political the EU Constitution, on which a referendum will have to be held.
Blair has already hinted he feels he can win a referendum endorsement, although the polls suggesting a French referendum may fail might make him think again.
While the Lib Dems are fully behind this reactionary Constitution, favouring strengthened EU, New Labour is potentially divided on this issue, as are the trade unions, with many bitterly critical of Blair's role in the EU as the leading advocate of George Bush and of neoliberal policies.
For Michael Howard's Conservative Party it is a supreme test of their ability to maintain both their credentials as Eurosceptics but also to recapture the party's status as the chosen party of big
which has been largely annexed by New Labour.
Many sections of big business are closely linked with Europe, and clearly concerned that a Howard government could put Britain on a collision course with the EU, seeking a wholesale renegotiation of the entire constitution which is bound to fail.
On the other hand Howard is under pressure to maintain a tough line on this not only from his own party's right Vote to punish Bomber Where Respect or SSP candidates are standing, calls on readers and supporters to campaign and vote for them.
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