So ... maybe what you are saying, lgirl (and you might be right for all I know) is that the British Labour and Conservative parties will continue to adopt each other's policies until they become virtually indistinguishable. Maybe totally indistinguishable. I don't believe that would be a good development - a tyranny of centrists, in fact.

I regret that this shift towards the centre has happened: we have a perfectly good "middle of the road" party in the Liberals, but, strangely enough, they now appear to be the most left-wing of the three.

But that's not really the point of this thread. Muskan has suggested that because the British social services spend money in looking after pregnant preteen girls, every British girl is going to contrive to become pregnant in order to get government handouts, which is effectively robbing the honest worker of his hard-earned crust, and this will eventuallt drag Britain down into chaos. I believe I have paraphrased his initial post correctly - no doubt he will correct me if I haven't.

He blames this on socialism, not the centrism you have observed, and so I have tried to express the difficulty I am having in understand his equation, young pregnant girls + social help and assistance = economic breakdown. I find his later replies unhelpful.

When you consider the trillions handed over to bail out capitalist institutions that lost their financial gambles, and the billions being spent on the Afghan war, what difference will a few hundred thousand going to a handful of unfortunate girls make to the economy? Apart, perhaps, from making it easier for a young mother to bring up her child and become a useful member of society.