I have read more of the Conservative manifesto than was good for my weekend, let alone my health. And like all other commentators I conclude that this is a document issued by a party that wants to say little. It certainly succeeds in that aim.
There are modest proposals to freeze income tax, national insurance and VAT.
There are small public spending commitments.
There is, in effect, nothing on a Green New Deal: the sums it commits to the environment are so small that the policy stopping the trade in puppies looks to be of more significance to the Tories, and I suspect it is.
Social care gets less attention than hospital car parking, which is a clear indication of who is of real concern to the Tories.
And the commitment to the profit motive comes at a time when everyone else, from the Financial Times onwards, thinks that the model of capitalism that the Tories are so keen to promote has long since passed its sell-by date.
So what's really going on?
First, and most obviously, this is a manifesto about winning and the Tories think they just have to hold their nerve to win.
Second, the Tories really know that if they win and deliver the Hard Brexit that only they desire, and which all other parties think will be a disaster, then having policy on any other issue is almost irrelevant. Parliament will still be bogged down in Brexit, as will ministers be for time immemorial. And worse, they know they will deliver an economic downturn and that, given the financial constraints that they impose, the scope for any other policy delivery will be minimal. So they're simply not talking about it.
Third, implicit in the superficial read of the manifesto is austerity. No tax cuts. Limited borrowing. And just a few token gestures changes as policy commitments. All this really means that things will, at best, continue as before. At worst, if Brexit is as bad as they fear it will be (and I think they do know how bad the consequences are, or they would be promising a Brexit dividend, which is very clearly absent) then their policy guarantees a further substantial tightening of public spending that will be disastrous for millions in the UK.
Fourth, to stand back a little further from the fray and to seek some understanding of the philosophy behind this manifesto, what is apparent is that this is about delivery of what I described as the Cowardly State in my book ‘The Courageous State'. What the cowardly state does is look at an issue, and then walk away from it, suggesting that whatever a government might do the market could do better. This is, of course, the logic inherent in microeconomic theory as taught to the vast majority of undergraduates who study that subject. It is also the logic of the Institute of Fiscal Studies. And it is also the absurd logic inherent in Brexit, that ‘free trade deals' will solve all our ills. The fact that they are unicorns does not matter: as we are told so often, those who question the logic ‘simply do not believe enough'.
And this is a manifesto by the believers, for the believers. The only problem is that it will come at cost to those who will be conned. And all those wise enough to realise that Boris Johnson really is unclothed far too often for comfort.
But what this means is that the absence of policy in this manifesto is not accidental. Nor is it solely to do with the paralysis of Brexit. Rather, it's choice. What we have is a generation of Tories who seek office not to use it.
That, of course, appears irrational barring three further thoughts. The first is that these people really are not good enough to do anything else with anything like the influence that they get from office. Their intellectual limits more than adequately prove this. Second, ministerial appointment is, then now the clearest indication of the Peter Principle at play. And, third, such is the way of the Tory world, the rewards of holding office for a few years are high thereafter: this is what really motivates these people, and not public duty.
So, we have a manifesto that seeks to deny the very role of government from the Tories. What it promises is (in)action to undermine all that government can do. And we have people set to deliver it more than capable of achieving that deeply destructive goal. It's a depressing thought.
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Well, you are dedicated Richard, thank you for reading some of the manifesto, I was wondering. On radio Scotland this morning – that bastion of business-friendly, worker-rights-are-bad reporting – they gave a brief run down of what each party was doing today, you know, like ‘so-and-so from LibDems will be at —, saying blah blah from their manifesto’. So each party got a shout on which manifesto thing they were going to talk about, EXCEPT the Tories – we were only told they were going to be at a sports stadium and… [GAPING BIG EMPTY DEAD AIR WHERE THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MENTION OF MANIFESTO PLEDGE THEY WERE GOING TO TALK ABOUT]. Very strange I thought, even under the usual circumstances of Tories getting an easy ride from the BBC, but now I know why the tumbleweed was blowing through the middle of their report – the Tories don’t have anything in their manifesto to talk about!
Our friends at the IFS have called their manifesto ‘modest’ !!!!!!!!!!
Proof if ever it was needed that the IFS are one of those institutions also captured by market dogma and who cannot relied on for an opinion.
‘Modest’? My arse. As others here have pointed out, it’s just window dressing – looking as if the Tories care about other things other than BREXIT when in fact they do not.
And there is some insidious ambition – on page 48:
“We will protect the integrity of our democracy, by introducing identification to vote at polling stations”
when there have been a vanishingly small number of complaints of identity theft at polling stations and I believe, no prosections.
The “integrity of our democracy” is very much more threatened by the Conservatives’ own paymasters.
Indeed
Photo ID for postal voters????
Yes…..
How are they going to do that?
I’m surprised you think it would be otherwise. These people really do believe their shxt. There’s no logical argument against an ideology. When it all starts to unravel over the course of the years ahead the architects of the débâcle will either slink off to enjoy their assets or else become even more reactionary in desperation to enforce their belief system, which is rooted in ‘Obectivism’ … ‘that ‘the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness, that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand). They are cynical sociopaths with no moral compass. As George Monbiot wrote last week: “I’ll take Labour dithering over Conservative cruelty any day”.
Very astute and insightful.
The Conservative Manifesto is an astonishing, “learn-nothing” continuation of the lies and deception perpetrated by the Cameron and May Governments of 2010-2019 regarding (1) the public debt in 2010 (it has been much higher before as % of GDP, without a crisis), (2) the true legacy of the banks’ financial crisis of 2008 (it was the international banking system, still unreformed) and (3) their covert policy of reducing the size of the state (apparently to be sustained by a Johnson government over the next 5 years).
Bravo!
Thanks Terry
I’ve read the lot do I get a prize?
There are a lot of “We will…” without any detail. For example they said they would review entrepreneurial tax relief, but given it has existed for a while you would have thought they would know what they should do with it!
There is are some serious non-sequiturs:
“Only by establishing immigration controls and ending freedom of movement will we be able to attract the high-skilled workers we need to contribute to our economy,”
— seriously do they think we have never attracted high skilled workers to the UK before? Bit offensive really.
I also don’t remember seeing anything about reducing poverty, might have to re-read. Noooo!
Don’t do it!
The manifesto is all part of the plan to keep things simple, along with not stepping forward for media interviews, putting out sh!te on social media and not caring about the fair minded thinking person.
The Grauniad reports the Honourable Member for the 18th Century is being kept away from public events in favour of a more ethnically diverse showing.
Perhaps it is too much to hope that Emily Maitlis will get a chance to interview Boris?
There may be plenty of promises of inaction but where they are taking action it’s the same old nasty party giving the poorest in our society a good kicking.
According to the IFS (Your households income: where do you fit in?) there are 11.6 million individuals with an income between £8,628 and £12,500. I don’t know how reliable their figures are. A Resolution Foundation report from 2015 on the Conservative Home website suggests for 2015/16 there were 1.3 million who paid NI but no income tax.
So even if we take the lower number by 2024 at least 1.3m of the poorest citizens in the UK will not be entitled to a state pension (assuming their earnings over their working lifetime never exceed the primary threshold or exceed them for only 9 years).
Promoting a saving of £465 pa (£12,500 less £8,628 at 12%) in employee NI during a working lifetime at the expense of losing a £8,500 pa state pension sound like the economic madness I have come to expect from the Tories but I can’t see that this consequence has been reported by the press or am I missing something?
responding to the comment re State Pension.
It would be good to see the rules if the lower threshold is increased. However In theory at the moment you could qualify for State pension if you get £118pw in income.
Current rule re qualifying years on low income (From government website):
“You might not pay National Insurance contributions because you’re earning less than £166 a week. You may still get a qualifying year if you earn between £118 and £166 a week from one employer.”
Thanks KenM – forgot about the LEL and as you say will be interesting to see the rules in due course but if they do raise the LEL by a disproportionate amount some low earners will lose qualifying years.
The headline figure of £8,500 is not as ‘generous’ as it appears as only 44 per cent of those retiring receive that sum according to the DWP, whilst under the old scheme 65 per cent received the full amount. To have the full entitlement now requires a NI contribution record of at least 35 years, where previously it was 30 years. Many who do not now receive the full pension were in ‘contracted out’ pension schemes which enabled them to pay a lower rate of 10.5 per cent in NI contributions and so their new state pension entitlement has been reduced as a result, whereas under the old scheme there was no reduction. The state pension age is being increased and the state second pension scheme has ended. The consequence of all these changes is a massive saving to the treasury in future years.
I have received two leaflets from the Conservative candidate in my constituency; a candidate who currently holds the seat by a narrow margin from the SNP. Most of the larger leaflet is taken up with six words that provide, effectively the sole message the Conservatives wish to convey in Scotland:
“WE SAID NO. WE MEANT IT.” [“No” here refers to a 2nd independence referendum].
We know the “no ” does not refer to a 2nd Brexit referendum because the second leaflet is given over entirely to a reminder that the election is close, on one side; and on the other, to a photograph of Nicola Sturgeon with her fingers in her ears, accompanied by the banner headline:
“WE SAID NO. WHY WON’T SHE LISTEN?”.
The Conservative and Unionist Party has nothing else whatsoever to say to the Scottish people. Brexit and Nothing is precisely the Conservative vision for Scotland.
More generally in the UK, the focus on manifestos is spun by the parties (if they want you to look at them, you should be more worried why they are deflecting your attention there – nobody sticks to manifestos anyway, they are more often used by opponents, ex-post as sticks to beat the government for failure to implement them); but I am a little more interested in observing that a mid-December General Election plays to the strengths of the Conservative Party. Not only because the Conservatives simply do not have the activist foot-soldiers to blanket-cover a constituency (like the SNP), because the greater activist resources of the SNP are in winter disarmed by the cold, dark nights inhibiting the traditional knocking on doors. Nor just because in dark winter weather the Conservatives are more confident of their vote actually turning out, come election day. But most of all because a more restricted, ‘inactive’ December general election plays more to a media dominated election, with its press-driven Agenda (favourable to Conservatives); but more critically now, to the social media-savvy credentials of the Vote.Leave ideologues now running Downing Street. This is their kind of money-resource, algorithm driven election, and I see no evidence that anybody else (including the SNP) fully understands what they are up against.The Conservatives are incapable in Government, but in a social media election, they know what they are doing, and they know how to manipulate the prejudices of the British people to electoral advantage.
It may be worth remembering that there has been very little mainstream political push-back against the outrageous switch in Conservative social media branding to FactCheck.UK; Twitter’s response was not adequate. Gove and Cleverly have been able to display the brazen audacity to proclaim the technique’s justification. Similarly there has been little political resistance to the subsequent editing out, by the BBC of the audience laughter in response to a Boris Johnson remark. It seems the gloves are off.
@John S Warren
I am amazed that anyone that wants to save the union would vote Conservative in Scotland. It is very much putting your fingers in your ears and saying “la la la la” – we don’t want to hear about another referendum”!
Don’t they realize that the Scottish Conservative MPs that were elected in 2017 have (by broadly supporting the Brexit agenda) put the union even more in peril? This is even more acutely the case now, when returning a Conservative majority will enable Brexit to happen.
Ultimately it is not possible to keep Scotland in the union by simply denying a referendum indefinitely. If you believe it is something worth saving (and I am not sure it is) then the argument needs to be won.
The BBC website has just acknowledged that the Boris Johnson laughter edit was a “mistake”. Unfortunately the BBC is seriously gaff-prone, particularly – it appears – when the bumbling PM blunders into camera view. The BBC, some may recall, also managed to lose the rumpled and untidy Boris Johnson appearance at the Cenotaph on 11th November this year; and somehow managed to replace him with the 2016 version of Johnson, who had somehow cared to dress for the solemn occasion, and had even combed his hair. Unfortunately the substitution was easily spotted because he was carrying a quite different green wreath to the red one he actually laid (albeit with typical Conservative ineptitude, apparently upside down) at the Cenotaph in 2019: another BBC “mistake”, to quote media reports at the time.
The BBC is becoming an editorial accident zone; a hapless journalistic Mr Worthing, of whom Lady Bracknell’s telling judgement may be paraphrased: “To lose one Boris edit, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
Agreed on all fronts.
The BBC is hopeless at the moment because I don’t think they know what is going on either.
I used to like Evan Davis but even he has managed to turn himself into yet another cynical presenter and I can hear him giggling when even serious ideas to sort this country out are being put forward.
If it is all too much for him then he should piss off back to the IFS in my opinion. Jobs for the boys eh?
Evan Davis has written neoliberal books
I am begininh to think that brexit is a new religion ( [piate of the people anyone). With Mr johnson as high priest and the tory party as acolites maybe?
Let us assume for one moment that the Conservatives can win this general election with enough of a majority to “get Brexit done” (ha!) at the end of January 2020, and then capitulate to all of the EU’s demands to get some sort of trade agreement cobbled together by the end of the year (any fool can get an agreement by simply giving the other side everything they want, and giving up on whatever you want that they don’t like … as we have seen already with the latest withdrawal agreement).
What are things going to look like in five years’ time, when Brexit has bitten in full force, and global warming is ratcheting up year by year? How do the Conservatives hope to win the *next* election?
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