adam wrote:

They want me to promise that under the Conservatives, the NHS will be transformed beyond recognition into a system based on medical insurance....
Under a Conservative government, the NHS will remain free at the point of need and available to everyone, regardless of how much money they have in the bank."

of interest probably only to people in the Uk but this looks like a major shift in Uk politics
the Conservative Party is returning to the UK political mainstream and reasserting a major building block of the post war (WW2) consensus
the "new Right" have been cast into the wilderness by their UK political home
a realignment on the European issue and then maybe the leopard has changed its spots and we can have a centerist realignment
bad news for Blair
good news for British democracy

It's certainly true that the Conservatives are returning to the fold but the shepherd remains Blair (considered by many to be more Conservative that many Conservatives...) On the NHS Cameron and Blair are now almost indistinguishable on funding but neither have any clear view on how to make organisational changes to use it effectively. The bizarre thing is that Cameron is making the Conservatives a viable party again partly by supporting Blair's policies! Government in the UK continues to be about management style rather than ideology, and Cameron's style has Blair written all over it - perhaps no bad thing for the Tories given how successful Blair has been in winning general elections...