Carta de valores

Na semana em que a Economist expressa o seu apoio à reeleição de Tony Blair fica bem claro o que a faz ser a "minha" revista:

«The basic background to this election is that Mr Blair has continued to hog the centre-right ground in British politics, as he has done ever since becoming Labour's leader in 1994. Michael Howard, the Conservative Party's leader since 2003, has sought to share some of that ground, at least on the NHS. But he has blurred his party's own identity by failing to offer a tax-cutting alternative and by his appallingly hypocritical opposition to Mr Blair's brave effort to ease universities' financial problems by allowing them to charge fees to British students—a reform that could have been taken from a Thatcherite textbook. Hence Mr Howard's resort to traditional Tory populism on immigration in order to make his party look distinctive. To The Economist's taste, this is a terrible move: we favour fluid migration, both on grounds of liberty and for practical economic reasons. The Tories instead favour illiberal limits and a labour-allocation system that smacks of central planning. The Liberal Democrats are more to our liberal taste: they also support immigration and rightly opposed Mr Blair's draconian anti-terrorist measures, especially house arrest.
[...]
If the Conservatives, or indeed the Liberal Democrats, were offering an alternative government likely to combine superior fiscal management, fewer burdens on business, liberal policies on immigration and civil liberties, and a foreign policy geared toward further progress in the Middle East and a constructively critical approach to the European Union, The Economist would switch its endorsement.

But such an alternative does not exist. Tony Blair, for all his flaws, remains the best centre-right option there is. »

[Bernardo Sousa de Macedo]