Project Fear… Vote for us, or the bogeyman will bite you!
The General Election campaign feels like it’s in its third century (22 May does seem that long ago). It is just dragging on. Over the past few days, I have been looking at the manifestos (Labour is coming out later today), and they are all full of wonderful promises… vote for us, and every child will get a kitten (I need an excuse to stick Chairman Meow in the photo), and we will pave the pavements with gold.
Some of the promises really are the sort of thing that makes you think, “Has someone written the word IDIOT on my forehead?” I will resist going into details on the specific policies because a) I haven’t got the time, since there are so many, and b) I don’t think you are idiots – you read it and you smelled the BS yourself.
The dear Lib Dems and Greens are making lovely promises of doing really nice things. Some of them are things you can’t possibly disagree with. They are logical and the right thing to do, but they are uncosted and undeliverable because they don’t stand a chance of winning. The Lib Dems are going to increase the number of MPs exponentially, and whatever they do, the election will be a resounding success. The same goes for the Greens; anything more than retaining Brighton Pavilion will be a massive election win for them.
Labour has certainly reclaimed the centre ground, and if you are a little cynical, you could even say they have gone slightly right of centre. There are some nice little things in there for those with a socialist ideology – for example, nationalisation of the railways, water, and GB energy, etc. When it comes to the economy and taxation, us, the little people, aren’t negatively impacted. No scary increases in taxation (despite what Rishi repeatedly keeps on saying), and Rachel Reeves certainly convinced me she is on the side of small and medium businesses.
The more worrying thing is the dramatic lurch to the right by the Tories, fuelled by the entry of Farage and Reform. From the very start of this election campaign, Rishi has been driven by shoring up the right-wing vote. National service and migration are all the sorts of things that right-wingers drone on about ad infinitum. And the Tories have put migration at the centre of their campaign. Particularly legal migrants, you know, the international students who come and study at our universities, and skilled workers (lots of NHS staff) from abroad who end up paying lots of tax and helping our economy to grow.
We need to be vigilant and guard against their “project fear.” As a nation, we have always embraced people from all over the world who helped build this tiny island into the mighty nation it is today. English is the world language, and we need to be a world nation. If Britannia is going to rule the international waves again, we need a world crew. We must play up to our strengths, and that is not going to be achieved by isolating our precious stone set in the silver sea!
Until next week,
Henry