Tagged with Theresa May

Election campaigning resumes today and tomorrow

General Election campaigning to resume today

After the horrific attacks in Manchester on Monday evening, in which 22 people tragically lost their lives, Theresa May announced that General Election campaigning would be suspended. Campaigning will now resume, starting with local campaigning today followed by national campaigning tomorrow.

Momentum have organised a series of campaigning sessions, including trips to Crewe and Nantwich with candidate Laura Smith and Bolton North East with their candidate David Crosby. You can get more details from Momentum here. Momentum are also holding  Bernie Sanders style training sessions across the country to get you doorstep ready. You can find your nearest training session here. Continue reading →

Theresa May’s Blairite Manifesto

Chatting to Alex Nunns on the Twitter earlier, he suggested the Conservative (and Unionist) Manifesto was a Blairite document. And he’s entirely right. Not because of the substance of the politics, but because what Theresa May and “her team” are trying to do with it.

Looking at the manifesto, if Labour’s was the best manifesto I’ve seen then, arguably, the Tory document is probably their least worst. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that is deeply discomfiting here. Yet at the same time it’s a patrician (matrician?) work invoking the spirit of manor-house-knows-best Toryism of Harold Macmillan and Enoch Powell. All the one nation lines are in there about tackling insecurity, sorting out mental health, and even a pledge promising to eradicate homelessness by 2027. And no, it doesn’t mean dragging them off to the workhouse. There’s some interesting wonkish stuff about investment banks, working with ‘old’ industries, introducing the variously floated ‘T’-levels to replace the plethora of vocationally-based qualifications, redistributing government bureaucracies to outside of London (hurrah!) and a few other things. It’s all there for the regen geeks. Continue reading →

What is the ‘Dementia Tax’?

On page 67 of the Conservative Party manifesto (analysis here), Theresa May’s “team” announces a significant shift in the way elderly care is going to be paid for. Their plans have generated a great deal of controversy which, combined with means testing for winter fuel payments and ending the triple lock on pensions, moves the Tories away from protecting pensioners from the squeeze they unnecessarily put on public finances to one where they’re going to have to also pay. It has proven hugely controversial. Some Conservatives are very unhappy with it, and you can bet this view is shared by more than a few of their MPs. Setting aside the politics of the changes and why the Tories have decided to put this policy in their manifesto, what do the measures mean and why is Labour dubbing it the ‘Dementia Tax’. Continue reading →

No houses, no lunches, no foreigners: Theresa May launches her vision for Britain

Only death and taxes

Theresa May’s shock announcement has been that her next government would make more people pay for their own social care at home. Under new means-testing rules, pensioners would start to pay for care at home as long as they had assets of more than £100,000, rather than the current £23,500, but the new calculation will include pensioners’ homes. This means that thousands more elderly people would be affected and have to pay for their own care. The policy would work by allowing people to run up the costs and pay for it out of their estate when they die. A “death tax”, as opponents have already labelled it. Continue reading →

Will Brexit kill the Boundary Review?

I’m breaking that rule, again. You know, the one forbidding ventures into the realm of political predictions. Perhaps the recent foray into long range forecasting has empowered me to speak about matters in the nearer term. So here it is: the redrawing of constituency boundaries isn’t going to happen. Okay, let me rephrase that, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the government are going to follow through. Bold claim, but what’s the basis for it?

Look at the chaos embroiling Theresa May’s government. Brexit was and is a tricky proposition, and by stupidly aiming for the worst kind on offer her government is unnecessarily multiplying problems for itself. Determined to be the super-toughest on immigration, May is determined that there is no way UKIP can outflank them on the right ever again. Yes – and just when you thought Tory leaders had stopped tilting to this dysfunctional bunch of has-beens, May carries on the tradition established by her predecessor. Continue reading →