Zoe Williams: It’s aimed at the holy grail of the ‘working family’
There is a considerable accent in the Conservative manifesto on creating a hopeful mood: new jobs, new apprenticeships and the right to buy housing association stock. These three promises between them speak to the voting holy grail, the “working family”, those normal people whom the debate overall finds so elusive.
The social security net is ignored, except in the intention to “take people out of tax”; increasing the threshold to £12,500 won’t make a lot of practical difference, since it will simply reduce entitlement to in-work benefits. It makes an atmospheric difference, though, to boost incomes by severing the ties between the individual and the public purse, rather than reinforcing them.
Right-to-buy is a blatant attempt to borrow some popularity from Thatcher’s council house flog-off: it is hard to see this gaining much traction among anyone who has any close-hand experience of either Thatcher’s policy or the social housing market as it stands at the moment. It is doubtful that it’s even lawful, since charities are barred from disposing of their assets, and most housing associations are charities; more doubtful still that it’s feasible, especially if they are serious about replacing the stock one-for-one as it’s sold (with whose money, if the housing association houses are discounted?). It does give some clue, however, to the great unspecific promise of a £12bn reduction in benefits. Talk of pulling back child benefit further, or reducing disability benefits is fanciful (never mind, in the second case, that any further incursion into disability benefits would almost certainly run into human rights challenges). With pensions ringfenced, the only conceivable way they could raise that kind of money is from housing benefit: in which light, the right-to-buy scheme starts to look less like the hotchpotch policy many housing insiders see , and more like the opening move in a profound retrenchment of the state’s duties to provide housing.
Matthew d’Ancona: Only the Tories’ commitment to ‘security’ can counter a world of threats
This manifesto is the product of what business gurus call “permission marketing”. Having established itself as the guardian of economic stability – in popular perception, at least – the Conservative party now makes a second-term offer: “a brighter and more secure future”, as George Osborne put it in his warm-up turn.
As I predicted in my column earlier this week, David Cameron promised “security at every stage of life”. He wanted to be more than a “high-powered accountant”. This was not, he said, about statistics, but the “good life”, and a restoration both of Britain’s “buccaneering, can-do” spirit and of world-class public services. “We are on the brink of something special,” he pledged. Today, in Swindon, his rhetoric was laced with an unabashed optimism and hope not seen since his plea to the nation to “let sunshine win the day” in 2006. This Reaganite idiom is his natural register, and it showed.
The detail counts and will be pored over between now and polling day: the manifesto’s aggressive revival of the “right to buy”, now extended to all housing association tenants, invites comparison with the Thatcher era, and is hard to reconcile with the core modernising claim that “we are all in this together”. But 30 hours of free childcare a week is a significant proposal and one that cannot plausibly be dismissed as divisive. The tax-free minimum wage and the entrenchment of the personal allowance are indeed, as Cameron declared, quintessential instances of “compassionate Conservative” policy.
Yet the broad claim is the one that counts: Cameron described a world of threats – from economic chaos to terrorist attack – that only his party’s commitment to “security” can match. Within that stockade – but only within it – he promises a better future.
The voters appear to accept the first half of the argument (Tories deliver fiscal stability, competence and security), and that limited trust consistently carries the party to between 30 and 33% in the polls. The question is whether they believe the PM when he promises hope, compassion and a Britain of shining solidarity. This is the last and much the most difficult obstacle that stands between Cameron and a second term.
Aditya Chakrabortty: Dave and George want to privatise things they don’t even own
The banking crash robbed David Cameron of his chance to reinvent the Tory party. Before Lehman, we had the big society, treks with huskies, bike rides to Westminster. After Lehman and RBS and Lloyds, it was austerity. Almost in desperation, it seemed, Cameron and Osborne reached into the back of the cupboard to bring forth a mix of Thatcherism distinctly past its sell-by date. Except that where Mrs T spoiled us with big privatisations such as BT and British Gas, her sons could only rustle up Royal Mail and uranium enrichment merchants Urenco.
The lesson of the past five years is that you can only do Thatcherism once, while stocks last. Yet today’s manifesto launch confirmed that the Tories are now stuck with the exhausted tropes first deployed by the Iron Lady. Right to buy! Property owning democracy! Reaching out to the C2DEs!
The irony here is that the banking collapse was also the breaker’s yard of Thatcher’s world. Letting finance rip; hacking back union power; turning public utilities into private oligopolies: all have been proved a failure. Yet Dave and George keep going. Today’s big wheeze was the sale at steep discount of housing association homes – aka government privatisation of things it doesn’t even own. You don’t get much more absurd than that.
The biggest privatisation of all was the sale of council homes. Thatcher did that, she said, to extend home ownership to all. It is now lower than it was when she left office. The stripping away of public housing meanwhile, has thrust more and more people into the arms of landlords. Her gamble failed, yet Cameron still wants to give it another go.
We live in extraordinary times. A few months ago, analysts at Credit Suisse bank published research showing that the world’s richest 1% owned 48% of all wealth in 2014 – up from 41% the year before . That is a rise of seven percentage points in just one year. If inequality keeps growing at that rate, then by 2025, the top 1% will own everything in the world.
Politically, the Scots are now so disenfranchised from Westminster that they will hand Labour the biggest whipping of its life next month. Across the UK, the grip of the mainstream parties is weakening fast – and would be weaker still had we a half-decent electoral system. Yet in their manifestos this week, neither Labour nor the Conservatives have acknowledged this new reality.
Polly Toynbee: A reprise of Margaret Thatcher’s greatest hits
“Yes, the Conservative party is the real party of working people today!” That was Cameron’s pitch, but you wonder how many will guffaw at the barefaced boldness of it. Really? From the party that replaced 1m good public service jobs with low pay, agency and zero-hours contracts?
“We are the modern, compassionate Conservative party”, Cameron averred without a blink, as if the bedroom tax never happened. One rule of politics is to keep within the broad bounds of credibility, but Cameron’s drift into unbelievability may jar with anyone who’s kept even a passing eye on his last five years. Will people be beguiled again by this re-enactment of the caring man he said he was before 2010? Probably not. Those who vote Tory will vote for what he is, not what he’s not.
His manifesto reprises Margaret Thatcher’s greatest hits – but dusting down old vinyl policy may not play on an electoral iPod 35 years later. Repeating history as farce is the risk. Back in 1979 her property-owning democracy idea could claim to roll back all-encompassing statism – but after five years of state-shrinking austerity, with the housing shortage on everyone’s mind, Cameron ignores how the mood music has changed. Housing is at the heart of the great cost of living crisis and people know that selling off social housing at knock-down prices doesn’t build a new home for anyone. They know 2m councils homes have gone – and a third fell into the hands of rack-renting landlords. Ah, but it’s the dream, the Conservatives say they are selling. Perhaps, but today’s reality may trump yesterday’s dream.
This manifesto relies on the stupidity of the people. The Tories trust they’ll never figure out the true impact of many policies until after election day. So they need not say where their £48bn cuts will fall or how to pay for last minute giveaways, trust us. But trust can melt like butter in the bright light of election-scrutiny – and there are three weeks to go. “Trust us” may not carry them over the line.
