Bush's positive record The positive similarities between the Bush and Blair governments are significant: prosperous economies and record spending on the main public services (particularly health and education). Bush "has been reinventing big government"; Blair's government is also bigger than ever. But while, as Kettle says, globally "the collapse of the socialist era ... is no longer disputed, save among a dwindling band of true believers", within the Labour party, the band of true believers - despite an overall dwindling membership - is greater than ever and now wholly unable to permit the remotest notion of any Bush-Blair commonality. They stubbornly ignore the raft of social benefits associated with a common economic prosperity, even when delivered by what is essentially a common, anti-conservative, big-government approach.
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