[jaguar]

Wow, too true.

The US is a bit different but I know that in many countries 'labour' or left wing parties underwent a dramatic change over the last 20 odd years and moved away from their union power bases. It was the rational thing to do but it moved them to the right and made both parties very similar, while both have their stigmas they are becoming less and less true.

I feel it's one of the biggest sources of voter apathy, both major parties are just too damn similar, this problem is even more extreme in the US where both are massively beholden to *ahem* external interests and fighting over a very narrow patch of political ground. Plato got it right in republic, soldiers, businessmen and politicians and never the twain shall meet.

The similarity runs deeper than that though, economic policy has matured to a point where there isn't much room for variation outside dodgy political moves like Bush's tax cuts. Protectionism is out and in most cases downright illegal and health and education policy seems more driven by budgetary realities than ideology.

The death of the nation state has ben predicted for a very long time, we're nowhere near there yet but maybe it'll be though stagnation, inaction and the resulting irrelevancy, merely filling out certain functions without variation rather than working to change the face of a nation.