Abandonment of Society?

With the Conservative’s manifesto launched yesterday in South London, there is now a final clear difference between the key ideology in the Tory’s policies and Labour’s, in the run-up to the next general election. The public can choose whether to help themselves, or to have the government be there to help them.

The Conservatives are giving the promise to let people take control over their own lives and reduce the state power. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, invited the public to become their own boss, handing over a lot more power to how the individual communities want to run themselves. Cameron stated how no government could deal with all the problems at present - and so stirred up a ‘call for arms’, wanting everyone to ‘get involved’. "This is a manifesto is for a new kind of politics", Cameron said. "People power. Not state power".

This is a definite divide from the Labour party, who want a more active government in resolving the current political and financial problems this country faces. The Tories are pushing for communities to set up their own co-operatives to run public services, to run their own schools, to vote for their police chief, be able to sack their MP and to vote to veto excessive council tax rises - all alongside much more familiar promises. It is all in the attempt to appropriate the idea of a ‘big society’.

But is it right, that in a time of such financial and political difficulty, the Conservatives are preaching an ideology, which also translates as, effectively, ‘you are on your own’. Now is not the time to abandon society in the time of recession.

Conservatives and Labour policy on how to reduce the structural deficit is most certainly different. The Tories are aiming to tackle the huge deficit a lot sooner and faster than Labour, with the pledge to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit over a parliament. But like Labour, the 150 page manifesto mentioned nothing about how they would go about achieving this. There is still a huge black hole in their expenses, yet Cameron insists that the tax cuts are all funded for. There is nothing in it to help the recovery; indeed their polices could very well put the recovery at risk.

Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg who launches his party’s manifesto today, referred to the Conservative plans as, "a manifesto of style over substance. You can't trust the Conservatives when they want to give tax breaks to double millionaires, not tax breaks to everybody else".

Cameron is going to have to go a long way to convince voters not to believe their political opponents warnings, of economic disaster, the reduction of government involvement in society and from always being the party for the upper-class, resulting from the policies in their manifesto.