Tories on the ball
Patience Wheatcroft lauds manifesto for business
AN INITIAL look at the election manifestos leads to the conclusion that there must be a clever internet entrepreneur who has set up Manifestos On-Line, with a pick ’n’ mix offering for anyone faced with compiling these much-hyped but little-read documents. As an opener, there is a choice of “stronger economy, fairer society, opportunity for everyone”, “strong leadership, a clear economic plan, a brighter, more secure future” or “a plan to reward hard work, share prosperity and build a better Britain”.
Those were the proclamations from the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Labour respectively but they are interchangeable, as are many of the other platitudes that pad out these efforts to woo electors. When it comes to padding, the clear winner is the LibDems, who manage to stretch to almost twice the 84 pages the Conservatives and Labour cover.
Aspirations to improve education, pump more cash into the National Health Service and bolster the number of apprenticeships abound; new homes are going to be built at record rates, it seems, no matter which party is in power. Amid the broad statements of intent come strikingly specific promises. The Conservatives promise that “we will add 1300 extra lane miles to our roads, improve over 60 problem junctions and continue to provide enough funding to fix around 18 million potholes nationwide between 2015 and 2021”. The LibDems will legislate for “legal protection of bumblebee nests”.
The LibDems also promise they will plant a tree for every child born but, however appealing such an idea may seem, it will not determine how people vote on May 7. The real choice, as David Cameron and Ed Miliband keep stressing, is which of those two will go into No.10 Downing Street. For business, the choice will be based on the safeguarding of the economy and the attitude to wealth creation.
On that score, the Conservatives have recently received the highest level of celebrity endorsement, with International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde and German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble praising the handling of the UK economy in recent years and acknowledging that, with the country’s growth far outstripping the rest of Europe, the government’s measures were clearly working.
Yet, while the opinion polls show that voters give the Conservatives the lead on economic competence, Miliband is doing a remarkable job in portraying himself as a pillar of economic rectitude. He promises that Labour would cut the deficit every year and that not one of its manifesto promises will require additional borrowing. What they do require is higher taxes, starting with a return to the 50p rate for higher earners and the mansion tax on homes over £2 million.
But in last week’s television debate, in the absence of Cameron to question what further tax- raising plans he might have, Miliband was able to appear as a reasonable moderate compared with the Scottish Nationalists’ fiery Nicola Sturgeon. A rather less moderate attitude emerges from the Labour manifesto, which essentially distrusts business and wants to rein in markets. Energy prices will be frozen until 2017 and an Energy Securit y Board established. Corporate governance will be reformed so that compan ie s will be protected from “the pressure to put tomorrow’s share price before long-term growth potential”.
There will have to be an employee representative on every remuneration committee. The private rental sector will be subject to rent controls. Companies will face an increase in industrial tribunal claims as Labour would abolish the fees the Conservatives instituted as a means of sifting out the merely disgruntled from the genuine complainants.
There will be levies on payday lenders and tobacco companies and extra ones on banks. There will even be legislation to give football fans the right to appoint at least two directors to the board. The
Labour’s manifesto essentially distrusts business and wants to rein in markets
array of threatened interventions rather detracts from the manifesto assertion that “we value all our businesses as organisations of innovation and wealth production and we will work strategically with them to create wealth”.
The Conservatives have their own plans for intervening in markets and, with an eye to the commuter vote, have pledged to keep rail fare increases within the rate of inflation. Their manifesto also boasts that, for banks, “we will ensure that Britain has the toughest regime of bonus deferral and clawback of any financial centre”.
But the Tories can show that, in government, they cut corporation tax from 28% to 20%, making it one of the most competitive re gimes for business. Promises to make cuts worth a further £10 billion from red tape and tighten the rules on strike ballots are further indications of a party that understands the need for an environment that fosters business rather than fights it.