In diaries last week, I went over the electoral rules of next month’s general election in the UK. Yesterday, I did a synopsis of the Labour Party’s manifesto (platform). A few hours ago, the Conservative Party (a/k/a/ The Tories) issued their manifesto. It a long-winded piece called "An Invitation to Join the Government of Britain."
As titles go, it’s rather lame. However, it lays out the big difference between the government and the opposition. Labour believes that effective government is what’s needed. The Conservatives say that a "Big Society" rather than a Big Government is the cure for what ails Britain. They overarching theme is to give power to the people rather than the government. They don’t deny that there are a great many things that must be done collectively; they merely deniy that the government is the appropriate tool to use.
Here, I have to start by saying that I have hated the Tories ever since I moved to London in 1981 to start graduate school, where I was a member of the Union of Liberal Students. As I saw it, Mrs. Thatcher and her thugs had decided to make war on the British working class and the poor. Nothing I saw during the miners’ strike of 1984 changed that. If you’ve seen the film "Billy Elliot," you saw a very sanitized version of what was going on – down to the rather polite policemen behind the riot shields. From where I stood, with the smell of tear gas in the air, the cops on horseback and in the Plexiglas covered phalanx were not peace officers. I don’t believe that the Tories have changed all that much. However since breaking the backs of the unions and the working class politicos, they can afford to sound nicer. My comments should probably be read with this in mind. The only reason to vote Tory is that British music is better when they are in charge.
The manifesto starts with a note from the Right Honourable David Cameron, MP, PC that reads in part:
Some politicians say: ‘give us your vote and we will sort out all your problems’. We say: real change comes not from government alone. Real change comes when the people are inspired and mobilised, when millions of us are fired up to play a part in the nation’s future.
When it comes to the economy, this means reversing Labour's planned National Insurance increase for anyone earning under £35,000. Using the tax code for social purposes as well as economic, the Conservatives want an allowance for marriage and civil partnerships. They will consider moving the date up for state pensions, 66 for men in 2016 and for women to 2020 (yes, the ladies get to retire earlier by law). There’s the usual right-wing belief that cutting taxes and spending freezes will cure everything but leprosy. They think they can save £12 billion by freezing IT spending, renegotiating contracts and doing less public sector recruitment. The Tories have promised to cut headline rate of corporation tax to 25% and small companies' rate to 20%. They also want to restore the Bank of England's supervisory role of financial institutions. Of these, the first, stopping Labour’s National Insurance Contribution [NIC] increase has been really effective in the first week of campaigning. This tax is very much like America’s FICA. Prime Minister Brown was advised by the Treasury to increase the Value Added Tax instead (sort of a national sales tax), but he decided to hike the NIC instead. The Tories have labeled it a jobs tax, and most Britons agree.
As for the National Health Service (Britain’s single-payer system of healthcare that dates from the late 1940s), the Tories don’t want to get rid of it. They want to make it better. Thus, patients will make the decisions about their care, including control of their health records, and they will be able to choose any provider of healthcare that meets NHS standards at NHS prices. They will decentralize power by publishing healthcare providers' results. GPs and other health services will get paid by results. Doctors and nurses will get more decision-making powers (that hoary old chestnut about some bureaucrat getting between you and your doctor plays in the UK, too). For instance, GPs will be allowed to commission local health services. They want to create more single rooms in hospitals, abolish mixed-sex wards and "forced closure" of accident and emergency wards. The Tories, unlike the American GOP, would direct public health funding to Britain’s poorest areas with the worst health outcomes. The biggest difference with Labour is that the Tories oppose a compulsory levy to pay for social care of old folks. They want older people to live independently at home and support voluntary insurance to pay for residential care.
As mentioned yesterday, political reform is going to be a big issue, especially if the Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power in a hung parliament. The Conservatives want to cut the number of Members of Parliament by 10% (about 60 seats) and reduce ministers' (MPs with responsibilities in the executive branch) pay by 5%. They would make any former minister found to have broken appointment rules surrender some or all of his ministerial pension, and no minister could lobby the government for two years after leaving office. They would ban central government bodies from lobbying other governmental bodies using public funds. More broadly, the Tories would give more power for backbench MPs and hold more free votes (where the government lets its MPs vote their conscience rather than any party line). In my opinion, these are very minor changes relative to what Labour has offered in its manifesto and what the LibDems historically have demanded.
On education and family issues, the Conservatives want to raise the entry requirement for taxpayer-funded primary school teacher training (a 2:2 degree, sort of a GPA 2.5-3.0 in the US, is the minimum that would be acceptable, as distinct from a higher class like a First, or a 2:1, or a lower Third Class, barely pass). The Tories promise to create 20,000 additional young apprenticeships (Labour offers more than triple that). State schools should get the power to offer international exams used by private schools. Parents will get the power to save schools threatened by closure; communities could take over and run good small schools. They promise to add 10,000 more university places (which is short by a factor of 5 given this year’s demand) funded by giving graduates incentives to pay back their student loans. They want to extend the right to request flexible working hours after consultation with business. Related to that, they want flexible parental leave; parents would share maternity leave between them. The Tories will focus on improving school standards through parent power and better teaching. In contrast, Labour will extend free nursery care, tax credits for families with toddlers and paid paternity leave.
Elsewhere, a Cameron-led government would immediately start work on a high-speed rail line linking London, Heathrow Airport, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds (as I mentioned yesterday, British Rail trains ran at 125 mph in the early 1980s – getting you from London to Edinburgh in about 5 hours thanks to stops in Darlington, Sheffield and York, if memory serves). At the same time, the Tories will halt plans for a third Heathrow runway and second runways at Gatwick and Stansted (each is considered a London airport – and yes, rightists against building things!) They want to create a Voluntary National Citizen Service to give 16-year-olds skills to be "responsible citizens", not unlike the Peace Corps, Vista etc. They favor letting employee-led co-operatives to bid to take over the services they run (socialism, anyone?) and the creation of Service Academies to offer training for the unemployed. They would start with hospitality establishing as many as 50,000 training places. The Cameroonians (as the UK press have dubbed them) would start up a Big Society Bank, funded from unclaimed bank assets; its purpose would be the provision of new finance for neighborhood groups, charities, etc. And as ever, the Tories want to reduce welfare dependency – this time they are calling their plan a single "Work Programme" for the unemployed; this would include the hard-hearted reassessment of those collecting an Incapacity Benefit.
My overall view of this manifesto, and of David Cameron’s leadership approach, is that the Tories really haven’t come up with very many new ideas since Lady Thatcher left office. Labour is out of ideas after 13 years, but the Conservatives haven’t done the real hard work of creating post-Thatcher ideas. Thus far, neither of these parties has entered the 21st century. I hope my bias against the Tories hasn't prevented an objective presentation of their goals.
Tomorrow, the Liberal Democrats present their manifesto, and I’ll cover that as I have the manifestos (or is it manifestoes?) of the other two parties.
Thursday April 15, Prime Minister Brown, Mr. Cameron and LibDem leader Nick Clegg will participate in the first ever election debate. Friday, I’ll have my comments on it. You can watch the debate on-line through ITV’s website, which I think will work for those of us outside the UK. Visit www.ITV.com. The debate is set for 8:30 pm British Summer Time on ITV1. That makes is 3:30 pm on the East Coast of the US, 2:30 pm for you in the Central Time Zone, 1:30 for the Mountain Time Zone (which is NEVER mentioned when the US networks announce when a program is on – Colorado boy here is annoyed), and 12:30 pm for the Pacific Time Zone.
If that doesn’t work, I have comfirmed that C-Span will be showing the debate on Sunday April 18, at 9 PM Eastern Standard Time. It won’t be fresh, but it will still be interesting.