Thoughts on the UK General Election, June 2017

Sadly, pre-election campaigning has generally been rather poor, particularly from the Conservatives.

Interestingly, if you believe the polls, Labour has been doing a lot better, which is contrary to what was predicted. However, even though Labour’s manifesto could have been used in the 1970s or 80s, there’s a lot of younger voters who won’t have experienced the painful demise of nationalised industries and socialist policies. It’s likely these people won’t understand that Labour’s manifesto is a complete recipe for disaster, even without the prospect of negotiating an exit from the EU.

Below are some Labour manifesto budget numbers which are supposed to demonstrate their proposed policies add-up.

The origin of these numbers isn’t known, so they may be incorrect. However, the costs are almost certainly underestimated and the “How to Pay for it” revenue is likely to be unachievable because, if you try to squeeze £19 Billion out of businesses and £6 Billion from the top earners, THEY LEAVE the country.

So, Labour’s predicted revenue would not be achieved and businesses, plus top executives will not want to be based in the UK.

Well done Labour, you’ve just started to wreck the economy, rather like in the 1970s, whilst leaving the EU, when the UK needs to attract more business than ever before. A complete disaster!

So a vote for Labour is a vote for economic disaster.

As for the Conservatives, their manifesto is rather poor; but not as disastrous as Labour’s, in terms of the economy. The Conservatives understand the UK needs to attract lots of business to compensate for the negative impacts of Brexit. This means competitive business taxes, low unemployment and low personal taxes to maintain consumption (personal spending). If this is achieved the increased tax revenue allows further investment in public services.

Herein is the main difference between the Conservatives and Labour; the Conservatives policy is to boost the economy in order to increase overall tax revenue, whereas Labour want to nationalise businesses and load remaining businesses and high earners with large tax burdens, resulting in a contraction, unemployment and consequently, reduced tax revenue.

The least worst case is clearly the Conservatives. However, to keep the Conservatives from going off the rails, an effective Opposition is sorely needed. It would appear Labour is not up to this.

By comparison, the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto is rather good with logical and pragmatic policies which appear to have reasonable costs. They follow Labour’s direction in raising taxes to pay for public services, which is somewhat admirable; however, as Labour found out, the more money you throw at public services, the more is wasted. Increasing budgets doesn’t result in increased efficiency; the service has to be reformed to become more efficient. Which is why governments should not be running businesses (as nationalisation demonstrated very well).

Sadly, the Lib Dems have no chance of securing power and probably couldn’t deliver a viable form of Brexit. Voting for the Lib Dems is understandable but won’t help deliver the least worst solution, but could help deliver a disastrous one.

Scotland is an interesting case study. The SNP, being so dominant from the last election, could be considered to have peaked and the only way is down. Personally, I cannot ever recommend voting for any nationalist party because of the direction nationalism takes. However, having said that, when Scotland overwhelmingly fell for the SNP message in the last election they (unwittingly?) helped to elect the Conservatives, by demolishing Labour.

I can well imagine a large number of Scots in deep anguish when they realised what had happened after they supported the SNP at the last election. Is Scotland going to be wiser or smarter this time?

To finish up, the Conservatives have a poor manifesto and haven’t campaigned well. Labour has a disastrous manifesto but have campaigned quite well. The Lib Dems have a reasonable manifesto and have campaigned reasonably well. The SNP is largely unchanged from the previous election with the exception of their desire for another independence referendum. Scotland needs to decide whether they want to be represented by a party that expends a lot of effort trying to separate them from the UK, or one that works hard to improve their failing areas. As before, a vote for the SNP is a vote for the Conservatives.

Voters born after 1980 are likely to be variably ignorant of the failed policies that Labour is proposing to bring back (nationalisation, increased business & personal taxes on the hated rich).

So younger voters could have a significant impact on this election, to the extent of potentially wrecking the country!

The conclusion is to vote for the (economically literate) least worst, which is the Conservatives. This should lead to the best overall economic strategy, maintenance of the Union and continuation of the Brexit process.

If you’re undecided, a vote for Labour’s manifesto would be a complete disaster, so choose another party to support, bearing in mind a landslide for the Conservatives is not a good result, but neither is a hung parliament or small majority.