January 25, 2010
Policy Watch
Of all the spoof D-Cam posters, this is one of my favourites:
After all, the Conservatives are telling us we can’t go on like “this”. They’re promising to slash the deficit by imposing swinging cuts on public services. Boris Johnson has given us a foretaste of Tory priorities, hiking fares for ordinary Londoners whilst arguing that bankers’ bonuses should be left untouched and the City unregulated.
But when it comes to actual policy, the Cameron team haven’t let much be known. Despite all the 2009 dross about the Tories not having “sealed the deal” with the electorate and how it “wasn’t enough” to sit back and let Labour lose, that appears to be precisely the Conservative election strategy.
Indeed, who can blame them? Because whenever they do announce a policy, chaos ensues.
Last week Cameron and Co sought to grab headlines by getting tough on education, and tough on the causes of education: No teachers would have less than a 2:2 degree under Dave and friends! To be honest, I don’t actually object to this on its own (if you’re in the 7% of graduates that can’t do better than a 3rd, it’s unlikely that you’ll be much good as a teacher). What I thought was plain weird was Cameron’s praising of Finland as an educational beacon – when Finland is one of the most socialist countries in Europe.
Similarly, Tory plans to import the Swedish model of “free schools” (which I expressed concern about before) leave out all the stuff about Sweden being a much more equal society than the UK with a long history of social democratic redistribution. On education, it’s either gimmicks about “elitism in teaching” or cherry-picking from Scandinavia.
To round the week off, the Conservatives grabbed some headlines by promising to cut MP numbers by 10%, a piece of cynical populism making Parliament even worse at its job than it currently is.
On tax, the Tories’ two big headline-grabbers are mind-bogglingly backwards. As noted (twice) last week, David Cameron wants to give tax-breaks to millionaires by rising the threshold of inheritance tax (which at present hits just 12,000 estates a year in a country where 560,000 die). They want to do this whilst promising to slash public services, and have already mooted a VAT rise to 20% which would hit the poorest hardest.
The Conservatives are adamant they want to have marriage “recognised in the tax system” – even though this is set to privilege already-married upper-middle class households. This policy has been attacked by the Financial Times as incoherent, unlikely to work and promoting the most morally dubious of motives for matrimony. That other bastion of socialism, The Economist, has seen its UK politics columnist question how the Tories square blaming most of society’s ills on big government yet “at the same time want to extend the reach of government into the most private aspect of citizen’s lives—ie, personal relationships, via your plans for a tax break for marriage?”
Tom Harris MP recently did a double-whammy of posts, showing that Tory proposals are unlikely to either encourage people to get married in the first place, or stay married if they already are. Giles recently noted Ed Balls’ observation that divorce rates are already back down to 1981 levels, and that if the Conservatives want to send a “signal” about marriage, they should find one that doesn’t cost millions.
In other less high-profile areas, we’ve recently seen the Tories quietly U-turn on the NHS, reversing a policy that had been used to slam Labour but which would have entailed the Conservatives taking from the poorest and most vulnerable to give to the rich. A little earlier it was noted that the Conservative draft manifesto contained some absolutely whopping misrepresentations and outright dishonesty. As for the Tory “NHS Manifesto”, not only did the Spectator brand part of it as “gibberish”, but it turns out to be flatly self-contradictory.
Not that inconsistency has proved to be confined to Tory thinking on the NHS. Clear contradictions have been noted in Tory policy on schools, employment, local housing, council tenants and crime.
But why just be inconsistent when you can flip-flop? Witness the Conservative Party on the education maintenance allowance (EMA): first they were against it, then they were for it, then Michael Gove said they were a bad idea, but now the Tories support them again? Who knows.
But surely there’s one thing the Tories will always guarantee, right? The slashing of red tape! The rolling back of state interference! The indiscriminate extermination of bureaucrats! Er, no. Despite promises of a “bonfire of the quangos”, at least 3 more are to be established if Dave and Boy George take office.
No wonder the Tories resort to vacuous platitudes on their campaign posters. Even if they get spoofed to high heaven, that’s probably safer than risking any more actual policies before the election.
David said,
January 25, 2010 at 9:46 pm
“if you’re in the 7% of graduates that can’t do better than a 3rd, it’s unlikely that you’ll be much good as a teacher”
Actually, I’ve met good teachers with no better than a third. Granted, *why* they didn’t achieve better in their degree might not be apparent, but it seems like a completely meaningless way of assessing who should receive funding.