Being Tory means never having to explain your manifesto
Ruth Davidson has tried to distance herself from the UK party in a way that almost suggests she leads a different organisation
I’M not sure why the Conservatives bother with manifestos. The Scottish one needed only one word: No. The UK party found 30,000 words to say: vote Me.
The vagueness of the Conservative agenda should have been the story of the week. After lambasting Labour over its dodgy costing of policies such as abolishing tuition fees, the Tories decided not to bother with any at all. Costings, like taxes, are for little people. Being Conservative means never having to explain.
I don’t like media conspiracy theories, not least because the media is much less influential nowadays. But you couldn’t help noticing that Theresa May got a remarkably easy ride last week. Media folk are suckers for strong leaders, even when – as in the case of Theresa May – they aren’t particularly strong and aren’t terribly stable. Margaret Thatcher did the same by projecting the image of “she who must be obeyed”, as one of her own MPs put it.
May’s refusal to take part in televised debate with the other candidates was – is – outrageous in a democracy where television is one of the main channels of communication. But she got away with that. Nicola Sturgeon made a powerful defence of immigration in her contribution to the ITV leaders’ debate last week. But without the PM, or Jeremy Corbyn, on the platform, it was like firing an arrow without a target.
The baleful influence of the Tory press was most evident in the way “Theresa” was allowed to present a manifesto based on cutting immigration to “tens of thousands” without giving any indication of the likely economic impact. The Office for Budget Responsibility has previously said that even cutting immigration to 180,000 would cost nearly £6 billion by 2021, so the numbers are out there. But who cares? Donald Trump didn’t need experts.
The BBC’s Newsnight did its best, but its policy editor Chris Cook was left open-mouthed and speechless by the sheer audacity of the Tory manifesto. Presenter Evan Davis tried to winkle a response from a somnolent Michael Fallon. But then the media collectively shrugged and said: OK, who said we needed all those numbers anyway.
Yet the Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell was mercilessly rubbished for his spending plans – even though he had identified sources of revenue to pay for things like scrapping the bedroom tax and increased NHS spending. Labour’s manifesto promises would be paid for by increasing corporate taxes and income tax on people earning over £80,000. The Conservatives actually said they were going to cut corporation tax, but made no attempt to identify spending cuts that might result. Nor did they give any indication of the cost of Brexit.
The Conservatives have yet again abandoned their deficit-reduction targets, and dropped their promise not to raise income tax and national insurance. But no-one seems bothered about ballooning debt any more. The reality is that both the Conservatives and Labour are going to have to borrow more and raise taxes: the difference is that Labour will tax wealthy people, speculators and corporations that can afford it.
Theresa May was allowed to present herself as “blue Labour”, a new left-of-centre leader, by making a few noises about workers’ rights and insisting that she didn’t believe in “untrammelled free markets” or “selfish individualism”. But Tories never have supported these things. Right back to Disraeli, the Conservative Party has rejected economic liberalism; that was an importation by Margaret Thatcher. The Tories are a nationalist party and have always backed the flag over economic ideology.
Scrapping of the triple lock on pensions, means-testing winter fuel payments, and introducing the “dementia tax” on elderly people in domiciliary care were presented as attacks on the wealthy and bridging the generation gap. Yet Britain still has one of the lowest old-age pensions in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And how exactly do millennials benefit from ramping up senior citizens’ heating bills? Of course, in Scotland we have the humane policy of free personal care.
That helps keep people in their homes longer and means the health services don’t discriminate against people who have certain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which affect older people.The Scottish Tories daren’t touch that, nor will Scots lose their winter fuel payments, according to Ruth Davidson.
She’s also dropped her plans to restore prescription charges, which she used to argue was just giving money to wealthy people who don’t need it. But with the row over the rape clause and the two-child benefit cap, she realised she had to try to sound a bit less, well, Tory. Ruth Davidson has tried to distance herself from the UK party in a way that almost suggests she leads a different organisation. That really doesn’t stand up: the Scottish manifesto was simply a cutand-paste job of the UK one.
But some Labour voters appear to be heeding Ruth Davidson’s plea to lend her their votes in order to stop independence. Certainly, most of the Tory advance in the opinion polls – they are now running at around 29 per cent – has coincided with the collapse of Labour support. Labour politicians, by celebrating Tory gains in the local elections as a “blow for Sturgeon”, have tacitly encouraged their supporters to drift to the right. It wasn’t in the least surprising that Labour councillors in Aberdeen thought it would be a clever idea to form a coalition with the Conservatives on the council. After all, if it’s OK to support Conservatives in Better Together, why not unite against the hated nationalists in local government ?
BUT that was a step too far for Kezia Dugdale and she was forced to suspend all nine of her Aberdeen Labour councillors. A more disastrous start to Labour’s Scottish campaign could scarcely be imagined. Like the incessant infighting over their UK leader, the row diverted attention from Labour’s genuinely social democratic UK manifesto. Yet behind all the tribal hatred, Labour and the SNP support much the same policies now – except, of course, for Brexit and independence.
Admittedly, these are pretty big buts. It is a measure of how politics has been reframed that the major dividing lines now seem to be about constitutional issues and nationhood rather than social policy and economics. But Labour have now found themselves in the awkward position, having rejected Europe and another Scottish independence referendum, of appearing like pale copies of the Tories. Yet their social polices could not be more different.
The press congratulated May for “clipping the SNP’s wings”. The Prime Minister said there could be no second independence referendum “until the Brexit process has played out” and then only if there is “public consent”. This could be a very long time because leaving the EU and establishing a new trading relationship could take many years. And, of course, the Conservatives have no democratic concept of public consent. I mean how is it to be measured if not by votes in the Holyrood Parliament? Opinion polls? A referendum on having a referendum?
Again, the Conservative policy is: don’t explain, tell. Theresa May is being firm with Nicola Sturgeon, just as she is with the Europeans. Like Donald Trump she is riding the wave of populist xenophobia. It was another depressing week for anyone who supports progressive politics, and I fear there’s worse to come.