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*nods* at the moment we have a strange situation whereby the leadership of both the major political parties are effectively neo-liberal. Both have made a run for the centre ground and an attempt to attract a very specific section of the electorate. In doing so both have lost some of their core support. Trust has fallen within the electorate as people percieve (and they may be right) most politicians as saying what they need to say and what they can get away with saying and what plays well to focus groups.
To really see what a party thinks you need to talk to the activists who meet on winter evenings to run the branches, send delegates to conference, select candidates to stand for the elections, and canvass for those canddiates once selected, who stand for local roles and who push their party's core values.
It is relatively easy, when a party has been destabilised by many losses (such as the Labour party in the early 90s, and the Conservative party now) for a small number of people to sweep great changes through the system. Usually this is referred to as 'modernising'. New members join on the back of that modernisation programme and some old members leave. If the modernising faction have managed to get hold of the systems and mechanisms of the party, they can then usually dictate to a large extent what brand of activist gets in in the key seats.
Below all that is the main body of the party, usually these are people who hold their beliefs strongly and identify themselves with the party at a core level. They usually have quite different politics to the modernising faction :P
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