Conservative commitments 7

7.    Ensure all people who work 30 hours per week on the minimum wage pay no income tax

See 23. In contrast to the preceding policy, this is nicely specific, although it still doesn’t say how it will be ensured. If it did, people would realise that it’s a duplicate promise to the promise to raise the personal allowance to £12,500.

The Conservatives have promised to raise the minimum age to £8/hr. This promise is therefore to ensure that everyone earning £12,480/yr will not pay income tax, exactly as promised elsewhere.

This might be the reporter’s ignorance, so let’s reserve judgement on this one, just noting that it would be open and honest to report that actually it’s the same thing. It’s better for the Conservatives to give the impression of having lots of policies relevant to low-paid workers where they can.

6 fails - 1 neutral - 0 positive

Conservative commitments - 6, 6 fails

6.     Build 200,000 starter homes

A laudable goal in some ways, but the devil is in the detail. Why starter homes? Where will they be built? To what quality will they be built? Who will pay for them? This policy is a nothing policy. It’s an aspiration with no substance, and the manifesto gives no further detail, actually describing it as an ambition rather than a promise. Relaxing planning laws is not an option, because the Conservatives don’t want to annoy the NIMBYs who care only about their own house price, not the national or local good. If it were an option, how would quality be ensured?

New homes sounds good to potential buyers, but we already have lots of empty homes up north. I need a flat in central London close to work. Building a house in Kent for me isn’t good enough.

I could go on. This isn’t a proposal to fund high-quality construction in high-demand areas. It’s an aspiration intended to win votes while having no substance at all. Housing is a complex issue and there is no simple solution to the crisis. This policy addresses none of the concerns at all. It is merely intended to look like it.

While I’m here, I also need to address ‘help-to-buy’, another housing scheme that the manifesto promises to extend. Mortgage guarantees are ridiculous market distortions that any economic right-winger should abhor. If banks think the risk is too great without a guarantee, then that person probably shouldn’t have a mortgage! Guaranteeing a mortgage is basically a government subsidy to the banks; too many guaranteed mortgages will eventually default, as the banks’ careful risk analysis shows, the buyers will have paid mortgage interest for nothing, and the government will pick up the tab so that the banks don’t lose.

This is offering to make buyers feel good now in full knowledge that the buyers will actually lose out along with taxpayers. If the Conservatives think that banks’ risks analyses are wrong, that shows a distrust of big business curiously at odds with their usual attitudes.

Help-to-buy is a scheme designed to inflate house prices by helping people get into debts that they cannot afford. It will directly contribute to any future crash, and if it ‘helps’ enough people it will directly cause one.

In housing, where one might expect the Conservatives’ free-market economics to bring some sense to a distorted market, the Conservatives’ dedication to wealthy landowners actually makes them promise to distort the market further, in conflict with economic sense and their own principles.

The housing crisis is an enormous crisis, equivalent to roughly £100,000-£120,000 (estimates vary) transfer of wealth from the young (poor renters) to the old (rich house-owners). It is the single biggest injustice in the country, it is caused by market distortions that right-wing economics would usually hate, and the Conservatives are especially dedicated to making it worse.

Conservative commitments - 5, 5 fails

5.     Extend the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants in England

This is possibly the biggest joke of them all. Housing associations are independent organisations. Offering their assets for sale at a discount (whether topped up by the government or not) is state appropriation of private property. It conflicts directly with (supposedly) deeply-held Conservative beliefs in the sanctity of private property. Conservatives who think that taxes are theft should be outraged about this one.

       Nationalisation of private organisations is deeply anti-Conservative. If they think that the state is better at deciding what to do with property, why so keen on privatising education and the NHS, or on the inefficient railways we have now?

       The people able to afford even discounted homes are actually relatively well-off. They need no further help, although they will of course welcome it. They’re not super-rich by any means. But it is the people without any savings at all for a deposit, or who would be turned down for a mortgage because they have no steady job at all, who need help. There are plenty of poor people not in housing association property.

       If it really is a gross injustice that people pay rent for years on end without getting any asset from it, the Conservatives should introduce the right to buy for all renters, including of private accommodation. That would certainly help spread housing ownership to housing users. I suspect that the large numbers of property investors and landlords in the party might object.

       Right-to-buy is vote-buying, except it’s at an astonishing price (tens of thousands per vote) and it’s taxpayers’ or charities’ money, not party money. Not that that matters, because if they’d been only marginally less subtle about it and offered money from any source for people’s votes it would have been a criminal offence and a scandal.

Conservative commitments - 4, 4 fails

4.   Open 500 more free schools

A free school in this context is a type of academy, which is a not-for-profit, independent, state-funded school. It is free to attend but not controlled by the local authority. Free schools are funded per pupil in the same way as state schools, but receive start-up grants.

The goal of free schools is to improve education by putting parents and interested groups in charge of it rather than teachers and experts working for the DfE. They are also expected to increase local competition, which is regarded as the only force that can drive up standards.

There is a host of issues with this policy, starting with government waste. Government is funding this competition with normal government-funded state schools, in effect duplicating its effort. Some companies run internal competition, but I have yet to see anyone who thinks it’s wise for a company to compete directly with itself for precisely the same market. Yet this policy is supposed to bring efficient business practices to government. The start-up costs for 500 schools will be immense and will be wasted. Free schools often start in areas where no new school is needed, ensuring that pre-existing government buildings that have been maintained for the purpose of education are rendered redundant even if the free school is a success.

We require teachers to have qualifications for a reason; it’s a basic standard to ensure acceptable teaching across the country. If this is a bad idea, school heads could be freed from the requirement without needing to set up new schools just to experiment with unqualified teachers.

Free schools require proposals from keen people. The people who are keenest, and able to negotiate the paperwork and project management to start a new school, are those who are either already well-off or have a specific desire to indoctrinate children. The well-off want to create high-performing schools with just their own children, who will do well anyway due to parental support; this helps explain the few results where free schools have been found to have higher performance. Indoctrination of children, such as for religious reasons, is a bad thing and should not be supported. Children are not parents’ property, to be fed ideas that their parents have chosen. They should be educated as independent people who will grow into independent, free-thinking adults.

Either way, free schools won’t help poor children who have little money or parental support. Children rely on their parents to make good choices. The problem we already have is with parents who cannot or will not make good choices for their children. Providing more choice simply will not help; it will help leave poor children behind.

Conservative commitments - 3, 3 fails

3.     Hold a referendum on membership of the EU by 2017

Referenda are good for democracy. It is sensible that really important issues are decided independently by the people. However, the referendum on AV shows that campaign funding and political support matter a great deal. In that referendum the Conservatives, having complained at the cost of the referendum, campaigned against it on the grounds that it was complex and would be expensive to switch to.

The cost of switching electoral systems would be that of a few referenda. If the Conservatives were so worried about the cost of democracy, why are they so keen to pay it now?

In an EU referendum, will they tell the electorate that it’s too complex for their feeble little minds and they should just do without the EU, or will they actually educate and explain why the EU is good for us? The referendum could be a terrible idea if the Conservatives campaign in a negative manner. Almost all economists agree, business agrees (except JCB which got caught by the EU for unfair trading practices): staying in the EU will be a good thing.

Sometimes the right thing to do is take the time to explain something, not pander to opinions.

Conservative commitments - 2, 2 fails

As a bonus for the first day (and knowing I'll be away for a few), here's a second:

1.     Invest an extra £8bn a year for the NHS by 2020

The key to understanding this commitment is that although it’s quite generous compared to Labour, it was utterly unfunded. The Conservatives produced this one when the NHS began to be an issue in the campaign but gave no information about where the money would come from. A party claiming to be fiscally responsible should probably have plans for finding £8bn. Most people in this country like the idea of the NHS being better-funded, but an open and honest politician would have explained what would lose out.

By not even mentioning who the planned losers would be (if there was a plan at all), the Conservatives failed to be honest about how budgeting works. They gave the emotional impression that they could fund everything worthwhile, but did it through being irresponsible.

It’s also important to note that the plan for the NHS which suggested that it needed £8bn more was already pretty harsh, anticipating deep cuts (efficiency savings of a scale that have never been achieved and that are required on top of ‘savings’ already seen) in services.

£8bn in funding does not address the structural problems the Conservatives introduced, nor the massive long-term issues that the NHS faces. No mention was made of the Conservatives’ attachment to PFI, the system that is bankrupting hospitals across the country.

Conservative commitments -1, fail

I intend to make this a regular series of posts examining commitments the Conservative (and Unionist) Party made before the election, including those outside of the manifesto. I was unimpressed with their offerings and decided to go through them one by one. I haven't put them in much of an order.

1.     Introduce a law guaranteeing no rise in income tax rates, VAT or national insurance before 2020

As Parliament is able to change all laws, having both executive and legislative power, a law limiting Parliament is a pointless waste of time. This commitment was a cynical campaign stunt that says more about how willing the party is to deceive the electorate because the promise implies that it is a meaningful commitment. An open and honest politician would never have promised something that is a waste of time (and therefore money).

       Additionally, this pledge does not refer to all taxes. As a political statement, it is quite limited, because it leaves plenty of room for ‘stealth taxes’, which were heavily criticised by the Conservatives when Gordon Brown used them, or for other tax rises. As a bold statement, though, it helps give the general emotional impression of a party that is more against tax rises than other parties. 

 It's for effect, not impact, and is all style and no substance. I count that as a failure, although some fans of politics love that sort of thing.