Perhaps we should call it May’s manifesto, not least because she herself calls it that, referring to ‘my manifesto’. It is also the case that Lynton Crosby, who is apparently in charge, has decided on a presidential campaign about almost nothing but the leader, believing it exploits the perceived weakness of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour. On the face of it the strategy is clever, bold and at some level perhaps rather cruel. But who cares, if it works? Exactly. But. There is a weakness. All the Tory eggs are in one basket carried by the strong and steady Theresa. If she trips up? Oh dear.
The striking thing about the Labour manifesto is its radical approach to all the problems facing people in their everyday lives and polls reveal the measures are popular with voters on the doorstep. Talk of Micheal Foot is pointless. People live in the hear and now and Labour has changed the nature of the political conversation. Likewise the Lib Dems are projecting their pro-EU credentials as a strength. Both manifestos are costed although, as always, economists argue about the figures.
The Tory manifesto is different. It is high on rhetoric but vague on the source of funding. But in three areas it is specific and it could be here that trouble is brewing. It could be about these things that widely reported rows between numbers Ten and Eleven Downing Street took place.
1 Ending free school dinners for infants is absurd. Not only have these brought a big lifestyle and life chances improvement for youngsters, especially to the poor and vulnerable, but they required huge logistical efforts by schools to set up kitchens and dining facilities to give effect to a very popular measure. Offering a free breakfast instead is cheaper and very cynical. An advance would have been to offer both. It sits very badly indeed beside finding money for new grammar schools, opposed by every educational professional of every political persuasion.
2 Means testing the winter fuel payment sounds reasonable, but it appears that most will lose it. Whatever the moral case, it is fodder for opponents in a manifesto.
3 Raiding personal property and and savings assets to pay for social care in old age and infirmity, especially in cases where the home is the only asset, is a stunner. On the face of it logical and fair, but in practice this is an attack upon the home owning democracy at the very core of the Tory ideology since Thatcher sold the first council house. Once the detail sinks in, this will prove equivalent to one of the many budget disasters we have come to know and enjoy.
The rest of this tawdry document, full of promises and platitudes, uncosted and ill thought through, I will leave you to ponder, if you really have nothing else to to with your day. It is a full magazine of ammunition for all the opposition parties, especially Labour. It has certainly thrown the editorial hierarchy of the Daily Mail into a state of ecstasy, which is enough in itself to repel droves.
On the one hand it may not matter because this is all about Theresa the Leader, so who cares about policy? She is strong and she will know what to do. This is the Crosby plan. The manifesto has a pink cloak and looks like a shift to the left, but underneath it is a rejection of most of what the modern Tory party has stood for since 1979. The reason for that is the total failure of economic policy to deliver the money needed to run the fair and just society about which she talks like a recorded computer message on a telephone banking app. Instead of offering to the many rather than the few, it kicks millions in the teeth.
On the other hand we come back to the basket of eggs. She may have dropped it. If Britain votes for this on June 8th, it deserves everything that will happen afterwards.