Illustration from The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In an excellent editorial the Guardian argues that like Tony Blair in 1997, Mrs May is where the majority of voters are, to the left on the economy and to the right on social issues. It suggests that she plays to this mood, as a political judgment that risks society closing in on itself rather than opening up. The conclusion is alarming, ‘Forward Together, says Mrs May, but where to? Nobody knows’.
The Guardian view on Theresa May’s manifesto: a new Toryism | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian
As I commented yesterday on my critique of The Conservative Party Manifesto 2017, it’s seriously light on strategy, costings and risk analysis. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May is not a conviction politician, she’s a simple opportunist, looking out for for what’s best for herself and her elitist supporters.
Older people who voted for Brexit should now be alarmed that something is wrong – because if they need social care they could end up losing their house (except for GBP100k).
May is incredibly arrogant, assuming that she can win with a landslide, without tabling detailed policies, costings and risks. Of course, she’s banking on winning voters from UKIP and the Labour Party. She’s discounting the traditional Tory voters who will be appalled by her direction, for example, abandoning ‘individualism’.
Like the Guardian editorial, I question May’s direction. She reminds me of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.
This leads me to an open question:
Should traditional Conservative voters support Theresa May, or should they protest voting for the Liberals or Labour, or simply abstain from voting?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
Dr Alf is right about the lack of costing behind these policies and the lack of direction. Sadly this applies to all the other parties policies as well leaving the Conservative Manifesto as the best of a very poor bunch.
People who are old and the young need to be told about all the things that they should be doing to prevent heart disease, dementia and cancer, so that fewer of them end up needing care and needing to visit doctors constantly. They need to understand that the NHS is insolvent and that their NI contributions from the past were all used up 17 years ago and that the NHS has been funded out of Petroleum Revenue Tax and Lottery funding/ticket sales ever since. Mrs May should have disabused these people but chose to keep schtum, so that a significant number of them keep abusing the NHS with its “free at the point of need” mantra to the detriment of the genuinely ill and afflicted.
Productivity per worker is too low but Margaret Thatcher was always talking about it and leading by example with her own workrate even to the point of quoting from the King James version of the New Testament where it says “If a man shall not work he shall not eat”. Worker productivity has fallen under this and other Governments and has been too low for 150 years. Until now it has been bridged with immigration with those migrants doing the work that people here do not wish to do, cannot do and are not willing to be trained to do.
Under free movement and with the dole and PIP, people from the indigenous population have had an easy ride but with the public finances in the state they are in that easy ride is going to have to end.
Mrs May chooses to say nothing about that either, so as not to frighten potential voters.
Worker productivity will not improve whilst top bosses deliver 15% pay-rises to themselves whilst the gap between average earnings and gross pay including bonuses and other emoluments is 450 to 1 but is just 25 to 1 in Japan and Germany, 2 of our major industrial competitors. 30 years ago the gap in the UK was about 30 to 1 but there has been no corresponding increase in board performance in 90% of cases and even less understanding of how to effect change /take people with you, motivate people to do more for less, as Dr Alf will remember from the days before he decamped to his his more reflective and fulfilling life in Cyprus.
With all these manifestos, I feel a sense of unreality as none of them is costed, none of them risk assessed, and the official public finances still in deep trouble, with none of them focussing on export led delivery, board performance and the need to make hard choices about the bloated size of the public sector.
I would prefer the Conservatives to win this election but not by too big a majority, so that the important issues which are being avoided are put firmly on the agenda and start to be dealt with.
Mrs May and her three stooges, Fox, Davis and Johnson, are not strong enough to deliver us a good Brexit deal in 24 months, so may all need to be replaced with a modern day Margaret Thatcher, with true intellectual and streetfighting qualities….Perhaps it is going to be a case of “cometh the hour, cometh the man or woman” but that search cannot come too soon.
This refusal to do anything about the Barnett Formula, Foreign aid, the size of the public sector, productivity, people eating themselves to death and poisoning themselves as they do so, exports and torpor and greed in boardrooms will not go unnoticed as evidenced by the Chinese who have already bought large swathes of land around our major cities without planning permission and by the Qataris who now own more prime London real estate in London than does the Queen in her own right.
When I go to Cambridge to meet clients, visit my bank and engage in fraternal activity, I notice that the glossy Cambridge tour guide no longer comes in just English with a Mandarin translation but is in two versions, one in Mandarin and a second one in English.
People in the UK are not being told about what is going on here, or indeed abroad either, by Mrs May or Jeremy Corbyn who seems to still live in some mental construct of a Trotskyite universe with unlimited money available.
Mrs May still peddles the myth that by spending little on schools and with a few grammar schools here and there the best and brightest will get jobs and others will do so by osmosis. She knows the reality which is that most of the jobs will be automated out of existence and is therefore not interested in spending money on educating the great unwashed masses to do jobs which will not exist.
That is why education funding has really been cut and nothing is being done about striking train drivers and why doctors are being permitted to leave for Australia as soon as they qualify.
These people are “frogs” ready for slow boiling and being hung out to dry.
I say vote Liberal. On this occasion not because I am a liberal, but because the only way to moderate her is to vote for the party nearest to her politics. By voting for the centre you indicate that you want her to shift away from the right and back to her own centre.
I’m glad you called her an opportunist. It’s the most frustrating thing about her for me, that she has no actual cause but the desire for power.
Thanks I empathize with your views. Personally, I’m still undecided.
Reblogged this on LibDem Fischer.
Thanks for the reblog 🙂