In the article “Labour are now the reactionaries, we the radicals”, the Conservative party leader, David Cameron, is trying to reach out The Guardian readers, traditionally Labour voters, to join him in the development of progressive society. He characterises the government of Gordon Brown as a centralised command and control style, autocratic government, which drives unpopular policies like the adoption of identity cards, against the long standing liberal ideas and the instincts of the majority of the society. In doing so, he also presents himself as the man of the people, not a leader of the party whose fundamental interest are closest to those who are better off and more successful, and who comes from a privileged background – a “posh boy from Eton”.
The article against the Big Government and for the Big Society does help to expand the political debate beyond the narrow argument about taxation and spending, which seem to preoccupy the election agenda.
But to what extent can we say that Labour are now the reactionaries and the Conservatives the radicals?
First I am going to focus on David Cameron’s article to point out why Labour are now the reactionaries, and in a second part, I am going to tell why the Conservatives are the radicals.

My observation on this article is that Cameron is desperate to influence the labour voters whose support he needed to win the election outright. He did however, resort to spin rather than substance to back up his arguments. Brown the "reactionary" has: "heaped taxes on the poor". It is true that the Labour government had its hands tight by the massive debt acquired as a result of banks bailout and much lowered taxes from the economy crippled by the recession. It is easy to pick on examples when Brown tried to revert some of generous tax breaks, and had to be told by his own party to leave lowest paid alone and introduce 50% tax for highest earners. We should not ignore the symptoms such as pay constraints for the civil