Grab, 'the UK is being run by a socialist government right now' - if you define socialism as consistently acting at the behest of the capitalist, free market ideology (except where British Industry needs protection) and generally acting like the previous conservative government then you are right. But I really wish people wouldn't try to redefine 'socialism' and 'communism' - the founders of the movement used the terms interchangebly for a society of common ownership (not state), democratic control of the economy and access to goods and services on the basis of need, rather than ability to pay. It was Lenin that defined socialism and communism as different, and then as state ownership and control of the economy - doing a great diservice to the socialist cause in the process.

The problem with liberalism, and I talk in very general terms here, is that it is essentially an emotional response which sees freedom as the absence of direct physical constraint (freedom from something). This ignores poverty, unemployment, wage/salary labour and alienation as the hugely oppresive constraints that they are.

Under capitalism (mainly private or mainly state), the working class are unfree. Individual workers may have some 'freedom' of action (to change jobs, for example), as a member of the working class you are coerced into selling your labour, or taking on any of the roles involved in the reproduction of labour power, such as schoolchild, housewife or pensioner. Because the capitalist class own the means of life, workers cannot escape from their class position in society: they are wage slaves.

For socialists, freedom is self-determination. On the new basis of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for self-determined needs, socialism will be a society in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Liberals would rather tweak the capitalist system here and there, but seem unable to recognise the social relations that give rise to the majority of blights on people in society.