Here is an example: I don't know all the details, but recently in Britain there was controversy over charging students tuition (I assume for college). Blair wanted to, as I understand it, and so the Tories were against it.
Well, let's operate under the assumption that "conservative" is a purely relative term. This still makes no sense for the Tories, because they are supposed to be more 'conservative,' thus they should appreciate reductions in the size of government and its involvement in higher education.
So, it's not that I'm holding Tories to GOP standards; rather, they operate as a generic 'opposition' party without any ideological cohesion AT ALL.
At the moment, yes. But then it's unfortunately the case in British politics that the opposition often oppose for the sake of, well, opposing. But the Tories are still to the right of Labour on many key issues such as privatisation of public services (including the health service, but even there they only support
latent privatisation because the majority of the British public would not support it), the rate of general taxation, Britain's relationship with the EU, etc.
As for tuition fees, both parties agree that they should be implemented on principle (even though Tony Blair faced a HUGE revolt from within his own party on this issue, as he did over Iraq) but it's only the manner of implementation they argue over. The only mainstream parties in Britain which fundamentally oppose college fees are the Lib Dems and the Greens.
British politics is no longer as clear-cut as it was in the 1980s, when the Tories occupied the centre-right and Labour the centre-left. Labour have moved marginally to the right under Tony Blair and therefore firmly occupy the centre, sorry center
ground, which has resulted in the Conservative Party currently going through something of an identity crisis; they cannot move further to the right lest they wish to become unelectable (which is basically what happened at the last election under William Hague, in which key Tory policy proposals included lowering taxes, joining Nafta, tightening immigration quotas, etc, and the Tories lost by a landslide), but neither can they move too far towards the centre because by doing so they risk losing the support of the party base.