There “needs to be a bit of something you wouldn’t expect in it”. That, reportedly, was David Cameron’s reaction to reading the first draft of the Tory manifesto. Jo Johnson, MP, head of the Downing Street policy unit, has been ordered to inject more excitement into the second draft.
The PM is desperate to inject life into the election campaign. His Australian campaign chief, Lynton Crosby, has taught him that elections are won by relentless repetition of a few key messages and the Tory leader is doing as he’s told. But if you think we’re bored by the campaign you might find it in yourself to feel a teeny weeny bit of pity for Mr Cameron. He is constantly immersed in the mind-numbingly dull nature of it all and is hating it.
Do you remember Tony Blair’s election pledge cards? They offered the election-winning ideas that most manifestos try to offer. The public knows that this is what manifestos are about. YouGov found that 92 per cent of us think winning votes is uppermost in a politician’s mind when they write their manifestos. Just 4 per cent think they’re driven by what the country needs.
So what would a manifesto look like if politicians weren’t focused on being elected? I have a revolutionary idea for what a really exciting, surprising manifesto might include: what about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
What if, instead of producing a pledge card with promises listed on it, one of the parties aspiring to govern Britain produced a card which listed the nation’s five biggest challenges on one side and some solutions on the other? Item one would be the deficit: Britain is still spending £91 billion a year more than it is raising in tax revenue. Two, house prices: 30 years ago average house prices were three times average earnings but are now five times. Three, social injustice: The poorest 10 per cent of households pay 47 per cent of their gross income in taxes while the richest 10 per cent pay just 35 per cent. Four, the centripetal power of London: Productivity in the nation’s capital is 29 per cent higher than the UK average. Five: Within the next decade Iran, Saudi Arabia and other despotic regimes may acquire nuclear weapons.
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Flip over the card and there would be five solutions.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance came up with its ideas to deal with problem one — the £91 billion deficit — yesterday. In order for the nation to live within its means it suggested a “menu” of savings that would be enough to choke any politician. The alliance’s plan would freeze all benefits for two years, pay public sector workers in the north less than in the south, abolish the business, culture and development ministries, scrap HS2 and cut the grant to Scotland. Those measures aren’t enough, by the way, to get rid of the deficit. They’re just for starters. The main course would serve up cuts to the state pension. At some point, says Andrew Haldenby, of the Reform think-tank, the basic state pension needs to become means-tested, as it is in Australia. Britain will never achieve fiscal sanity until a politician is willing to face up to the grey vote.
If the grey vote is vested interest number one then vested interest number two is the Nimby vote. Key to changing this, says Nick Boys Smith, of Create Streets, is to turn the debate from a focus on building more houses to making housebuilding more popular. House design needs to become beautiful. Infrastructure needs to be provided alongside new housing. The enormous proceeds of changing planning permission (and they really are game-changingly enormous) need to be shared with local homeowners. By sharing I mean bribing. A vision of beautiful garden cities stretching from Oxford to Cambridge, accommodating two million people over the next two decades, is the kind of big idea that Britain’s housing crisis needs.
Problem three is that heavy, disincentivising tax burden on the poor. We need to end the merry-go-round in which the state extracts taxes with one hand and dispenses top-up benefits with the other. Up to £13 billion could be raised by charging capital gains tax on the sale of first homes. Every penny of that tax bonanza should be used to cut taxes on low-paid workers.
Four is the north-south gap. Sitting under deprived places like Blackpool is gold. Okay, not quite gold but shale gas reserves that are worth tens of billions of pounds if the green lobby is faced down. It is in the urgent national interest that they are faced down. Let the north keep the proceeds from fracking and invest the proceeds in infrastructure that will help it compete with London.
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My fifth and final problem trumps the other four: nuclear annihilation. (Yes, it’s being so cheerful that keeps me going.) Nuclear weapons can’t be disinvented and at some point odious regimes that won’t easily be deterred by mutually assured destruction will have possession of them and might be “mad” enough to use them. We should work with America to deliver Ronald Reagan’s vision of missile defence. Ideally we’d deliver missile defence and renew Trident but if austerity forces us to choose: I’d ditch Trident.
Is that all exciting enough for you, prime minister?
The 1983 Labour manifesto was called the longest suicide note in history and I’ve probably just written the shortest. There are reasons why Lynton Crosby is running the Tory election campaign and not me but I would provide David Cameron with more excitement. But, perhaps, a little too much.