More politics help

[BFM_Noddu]

Assess the extent to which the contemporary Conservative and Labour parties reflect distinctive political principles.

Now although we British are renown for our high intelectual thinking as show by our pestigious universities like Cambridge and Oxford... I'm not the sharpest bullet in the MA5B (Halo reference, feel free to laugh).

Now the way I see this question I've briefly outlined that political principles and views have and do change over time. I follow it up with paragraphs on examples, such as Labour party for Nationalisation of industry in comparison with privitisation of industry that the conservatives strive to adopt.

But in all honesty I don't know where I'm going with this... I'm at a dead end in a deep cavern (Blood Gulch  )

So if anyone can just suggest how I can build my answer up, suitable examples eg. This is not for a test and I do refer to my sources when I use online information or books.

Cheers for any help given Noddu x

[jim360]

I think the best (though perhaps not the easieist) way to approach this question would be to consider the manifestos of the two parties over the last 2 or 3 general elections and try to find the common policies. So if, say, in 1997 the Conservative manifesto had a policy on economic spending, compare that with their 2001 and 2005 policies on the economy and see how much change there has been. If none, that would be a "distinctive political prinicple".

Of course, this may be tricky if you are unable to get a copy of the manifestos, and anyway what is in the manifesto may not (in the case of Labour who won the last three elections) be the same as what is actually done (not a political comment per se, there are several reasons to do things differently from how you said you would do them).

If that proves too hard, then instead you might want to focus on two or three key policy areas, say the economy, crime and education, and look at what each party has said (Tory) and done (Labour) on these over the last decade.

I can think of one website that may help with this, but the main source would be political news columns that may be accessed from newspaper websites such as The Telegraph (useful if you want to know what the Tories are saying) and the Independent (whose archives seem to be free-to-access). Try avoiding the "comment articles" since these will be opinionated.

three60 (of Cambridge )