Several election manifestos have been published this week, but only one is important, because it belongs to the party that's going to win.
60 things the Conservative Party manifesto (genuinely) promises
1) Under the strong and stable leadership of Theresa May, there will be no ideological crusades. 2) Under Theresa May’s leadership, ordinary, working families will no longer be ignored. 3) We must reject the ideological templates provided by the socialist left and the libertarian right and instead embrace the mainstream view. 4) We will need to give people real opportunity and make Britain the world’s Great Meritocracy. 5) The government’s agenda will not be allowed to drift to the right.
6) We will get on with the job and take Britain out of the European Union. 7) We continue to believe that no deal is better than a bad deal for the UK. 8) As we leave the European Union, we will no longer be members of the single market or customs union. 9) We will determine a fair settlement of the UK’s rights and obligations as a departing member state. 10) We will remain signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights for the duration of the next parliament.
11) We will not increase the level of Value Added Tax. 12) We will be the world’s foremost champion of free trade. 13) We want to make sure that there are as few barriers to trade and investment as possible. 14) We believe that shale energy could play a crucial role in rebalancing our economy. 15) We will continue our programme of strategic national investments, including the expansion of Heathrow Airport.
16) We will grant a free vote to give parliament the opportunity to decide the future of the Hunting Act. 17) We will make CCTV recording in slaughterhouses mandatory. 18) We will support local authorities that wish to combine to serve their communities better. 19) We will start moving significant numbers of civil servants and other public servants out of London and the south-east to cities around the UK. 20) We will maintain free entry to the permanent collections of our major national museums and galleries.
21) We will increase the defence budget by at least 0.5% above inflation in every year of the new parliament. 22) British troops will in future be subject to the Law of Armed Conflict, not the European Court of Human Rights. 23) We will maintain the commitment to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on assistance to developing nations and international emergencies. 24) We will work to reduce asylum claims made in Britain. 25) We will legislate to mandate changes in police practices if ’stop and search’ does not become more targeted.
26) We will repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. 27) We will extend the first past the post system of voting to mayoral elections. 28) We will legislate to ensure that a form of identification must be presented before voting. 29) We will retain the traditional method of voting by pencil and paper. 30) We will continue to ensure the work of the House of Lords remains relevant and effective by addressing issues such as its size.
31) We will lift the ban on the establishment of selective schools. 32) We will expect every 11-year old to know their times tables off by heart. 33) To help new teachers remain in the profession, we will offer forgiveness on student loan repayments while they are teaching. 34) We will prohibit councils from creating any new places in schools that have been rated either ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted. 35) Schools in England will offer a free school breakfast to every child in every year of primary school.
36) It is our objective to reduce immigration to sustainable levels, by which we mean annual net migration in the tens of thousands. 37) We will increase the earnings thresholds for people wishing to sponsor migrants for family visas. 38) We will toughen the visa requirements for students, to make sure that we maintain high standards. 39) To defeat extremism, we need to learn from how civil society and the state took on racism in the twentieth century. 40) We will establish a Commission for Countering Extremism to identify examples of extremism and expose them.
41) We want almost every car and van to be zero-emission by 2050. 42) We will work with train companies and their employees to agree minimum service levels during periods of industrial dispute – and if we cannot find a voluntary agreement, we will legislate to make this mandatory. 43) We will review rail ticketing, removing complexity and perverse pricing. 44) By 2022, all major roads and main line trains will enjoy full and uninterrupted mobile phone signal. 45) We will invest in more community minibuses for rural areas poorly served by public transport.
46) We will introduce a new Double Lock, meaning that pensions will rise in line with the earnings that pay for them, or in line with inflation – whichever is highest. 47) We will ensure that the state pension age reflects increases in life expectancy, while protecting each generation fairly. 48) No matter how large the cost of care turns out to be, people will always retain at least £100,000 of their savings and assets, including value in the family home. 49) We will give workers a new statutory entitlement to carer’s leave. 50) We will means-test Winter Fuel Payments, focusing assistance on the least well-off pensioners.
51) We will make non-legislative changes in the NHS to remove barriers to the integration of care. 52) We expect GPs to come together to provide greater access, more innovative services, share data and offer better facilities. 53) We will make it a priority in our negotiations with the European Union that the 140,000 staff from EU countries can carry on making their vital contribution to our health and care system. 54) We will get 1 million more people with disabilities into employment over the next ten years.
55) We will build better houses, to match the quality of those we have inherited from previous generations. That means supporting high-quality, high-density housing like mansion blocks, mews houses and terraced streets. 56) We will build new fixed-term social houses, which will be sold privately after ten to fifteen years with an automatic Right to Buy for tenants, the proceeds of which will be recycled into further homes.
57) We will not proceed with the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press. 58) We do not believe that there should be a safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online and will work to prevent them from having this capability. 59) We will be the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet. 60) We will make Britain the safest place in the world to be online.
