It is now widely accepted in both Britain and Brussels that the centre of political gravity in the United Kingdom is some way to the right of that in continental Europe. When it comes to issues such as taxation and trade unionism, that may be true: Tony Blair has accepted most of the Thatcherite inheritance, and is calling for economic liberalisation across the EU. But the same cannot be said of the issues on which Mr Blair fought the last election, health and education. Compared with the way those services are run in mainland Europe, health and education in Britain are run by centralised, egalitarian, socialist-style systems.
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