Now we have seen the Labour, LibDem, Brexit, Green and Conservative manifestos we can compare the futures they offer.
If this is the Brexit election then you probably know where the different parties stand on that issue. If you want a poor Leave deal then vote Conservative. If you want an even worse Leave deal then vote Brexit party (although all you will be doing is reducing your chance of getting the Conservative poor Brexit deal). If you want a different poor deal or you want to Remain then Labour might work for you. If you want to Remain then Green or LibDem might suit you best. And then you will have to get on with the rest of your life actually waiting for Brexit to play out to its distant end and living with a government that has to deal with everything else in the world.
Is there anything else happening in the world? Plenty actually. Even ignoring health, social care and education there is climate change? Remember – it’s supposed to be the biggest threat to life on Earth (which no-one could say of Brexit).
Shouldn’t we make this the climate action election? After all, we may not get another election for five years and by then we will be at 2024 and we need to fill those five years with action, and the right action.
If you vote Conservative then we could get to 2024 with very little UK action on climate change. After all, we’ve seen little action since 2010 on this subject from Conservative governments (and the best ministers on this subject since then were LibDem ministers not Tories).
There is, according to the way the polls are going, only one realistic alternative to a Conservative government and that is a Labour-led government (almost certainly without a majority and propped up by the SNP and LibDems). We need not spend too much time considering what sort of Prime Minister Jo Swinson might be – not this time around anyway.
Things might change, but probably not much, and my highest hope is that Labour, the LibDems and the SNP do well against Tory incumbents all over the UK and see off all Conservative challenges in seats those three parties already hold. And I trust that Caroline Lucas will romp home in Brighton Pavilion.
The Conservative election manifesto is less poisonous than its version of two years’ ago but it is still dire. It has swung from radically nasty to vapidly bland. Certainly on climate action there is no cry to ‘Get it done’. There is no drive and no enthusiasm to tackle a massive environmental problem. Instead, presumably to fill the yawning policy gaps, and to paper over the lack of new ideas, we are given eight photographs of Boris Johnson.
The false message of ‘Get Brexit done’ may well be enough to fool some of the electorate, maybe enough of the electorate, but it isn’t a plan for government and on the basis of this manifesto the Conservatives do not deserve another chance to govern. If they haven’t got the hang of it after 2010, 2015 and 2017 (and they haven’t) then why should we think that a weakened and divided Conservative party might do a good job after 2019. A once- competent (sometimes nasty) party has been brought low by internal fighting and by three Prime Ministers, Cameron, May and Johnson.
The last four years have cleared out many of the best Conservatives of recent years and left the current bunch of nonentities. How many of the current Cabinet had you even heard of three years ago? And how many have impressed you with their performance in office?
Their current manifesto shows that the current Conservative party ony has a slogan (a false slogan) and a bunch of photographs of a blond Etonian to offer the electorate. It’s not enough for me although I fear it may be enough for too many others.
Don’t let it be enough for you, please. If climate change is the biggest issue facing the world, then the Conservative party is not up to the job of addressing it and this manifesto shows they have no desire to face it. ‘Anyone but the Tories’ is a good enough rule of thumb to take with you into the voting cubicle. You’ll be doing the rest of the world a favour too.
[registration_form]
Very well summed up Mark. As you say, vote for anyone but the Tories. However I fear the best we can hope for is an alliance between the Lib Dem’s, the Greens, the Scottish Nats and Labour, but this is a bit of a long shot. I think. Johnson is such a con man that I fear a lot of people will vote for him. We desperately need leadership from the centre and left of centre parties and it is just not there. The Labour Party has a habitat of choosing the wrong leader and they have done so now. We just need someone like David Miliband who can galvanise the Centre and left of centre parties.
Hidden in Labour’s announcements is the really practical proposal that hits both Cc and socialist buttons firmly on the head – the proposal to improve the energy performance of millions of British homes. What could we do better for this country today than to help some of our poorest people living in old, draughty and damp housing when doing it helps the biggest issue, carbon emissions ? And this is big, far bigger than the headline grabbers – roughly half our energy goes on heating compared to 12% on transport of which 3 % is on flying. I’m not defending flying – and especially not the failure to upgrade public transport which has led to the urgent need for a low emissions zone here in Bristol – but if not the only game in town, buildings are indisputably the biggest.
Quite how any rational human could vote for a party led by someone for whom facts and the truth are but a distant memory, whose grasp of the detail of any subject is at best vague and whose sole aim seems to be the furthering of his own ambition by any means is beyond me.