Yes, I'm not sure if Howard being there increases or decreases their chances. I suppose their logic is that this will draw back the staunch tories who voted them in before and were put off talk of change. They don't get the fact that New Labour has stolen all the policies they had that were appealing to the elecorate (Present company, including me, excepted) and left them with nothing popular.
Basically the key tenents of the right wing are :
Right Wing Spiel - Reality

1) Markets are great and introducing a market where there isn't one will solve everything - Markets make the rich richer and lead to lots of hefty donations from rich people and companies who benefit from them. We've had a market driven capitalist ethic in the western 'civilised world' for some time - has the percentage of poverty gone down? I don't have any stats on this but I'd be surprised if progress in this area has been anything more than glacial.

2) The public sector can never do as good a job as the private sector - The NHS is the single largest organisation in Europe. Think of all the bull you've encountered at every private sector company you've worked at and imagine those clowns running such a huge enterprise, would they do a better job? Look at the jobs going abroad purely down to the bottom line - would that kind of thinking work with the NHS? It clearly hasn't with the railways. Basic infrastructure and public services should be paid for by tax payers and run by the government, anything else is just folly. Anyone reading this who disagrees, go point out an example of private sector run public services that works well. What right wing folk fail to understand, and are frankly incapable of understanding - their brains are not wired the right way - is that folk who work in the public sector are not motivated purely by money. The idea of doing a job for the good of your fellow man is incomprehensible to these numpties.

3) The most important person in the world is number 1 - Me, me, me, me, my money, my house, my car etc. Not much more to write about this than that. Pure, unadulterated selfishness and childlike attitude - perhaps stemming from the spoilt brat beginnings of many such people?

I agree on free education but how will we pay for it?
All this stuff requires money and I don't see how we can get that other than higher taxation of the highest earners, and since they are more likely to vote, it is unlikely we will achieve that. That's why I applaud Gordon Brown's stealth tax approach, he has been very successful in squeezing more money out without overtly appearing to do so. I hope he does something related to the house market next time. I'm sick of conversations about how much houses are worth. I mean, my flat is probably worth about 45%+ more than I paid for it, so what? Even with the profits I'd still be looking at paying more than 2 times what I paid for it to move up the scale into a detached house. And if I don't move, what does that increase do for me? Nothing except enable me to borrow money I can't afford to pay back or sell and liquidate my asset if things get bad - at which time it'll probably be worth less anyway!

It's clear to me the current set-up is unsustainable and the more people realise this the less chance someone like Howard has of being in control again. Keep going like we are and the only outcome is bankruptcy. It looks like people will only realise that once the USA goes bust, as it must surely do? The irony of the bastion of capiltalism leading it's downfall would be pretty sweet :)