Tory Fault Lines

Progress Online has a good post on the Conservative approach to the NHS, and how it reveals fault lines in the Conservatives basic philosophy. Basically, the drive to sell-off, to marketise and privatise is in conflict with the drive to "conserve" elements of society which has always been at the root of collective and individual conservatism.

I have always believed this to be the case, especially since Margaret Thatcher adopted a harsh "free market" and individualist economic and social model as her Government's basis of policy making. It seemed to me that selling off the family silver and trashing the "old ways", as the Thatcher model demanded, was in serious conflict with the urge to conserve tradition and institutions which was the basis of real "conservatism" (large C and small c) as I had previously understood it.