UK Decides: An Occasional Election Diary - 2

You may find my comment on the election rather shallow –and you would be right. But I am in good company. Sarah Gordon's and Samantha Cameron's feet have recently come in for some serious scrutiny. Sarah removed her shoes on one visit and the media discovered she has somewhat crossover toes, so she has been helpfully advised what kind of corrective trendy sandals to wear. Sam, as revealed by her open toe sandals, paints her toenails black. Well, we sure know now which wife has the most trendy feet!

A column headed "Stylishness Rating" awarded the Labour launch three stars and concluded that "it was a relief to see Sarah swap the frippery of cardigans for a structured jacket". Where was this important column – the main Election 2010 page of the Guardian. As admen know, beautiful young women can sell anything, so the glitzy launches of both main parties featured photogenic young women in their lineups. A "stiletto socialist" blogger, wearing a scarlet dress, spoke at the Labour launch. At least she is a political commentator who had previously called for the resignation of the Gordon Brown. The Conservatives just had anonymous pretty faces sprinkled among the senior politicians, like icing on the cake.

As predicted the Conservative manifesto makes no bones about public service cuts, with 6 billion pounds to be saved by "eliminating waste" and a further 12 billion of "efficiency savings" yet to be identified, to reduce the deficit. Despite this, tax cuts are also on the cards.

But the Tory manifesto is not primarily about the economy. It is about "togetherness", described in a booklet entitled "Invitation to join the Government of Britain". The proposals, launched with a sort of evangelical razzamatazz, would give people their own social care and health budgets, allow neighbourhood groups to take over failing public services, enable voters to evict errant MPs, local people could save the Post Offices, hold school providers to account and start their own schools. It would encourage co-operatives and mutualism with a culture of local and individual responsibility and self reliance.

If you can't understand what will actually happen under these policies, and I certainly can't, neither are the Tory commentators clear on the detail. But they "address over-mighty, inefficient state control" through "empowerment of small platoons" and are "revolutionary, fresh, inspiring, a return to full people power". (Whanau Ora just isn't even on the field with this ball game.)

If I was amazed by Labour's policy for parents to force takeover and mergers of schools, I am stunned by the Conservative policy that appears to free schools from direct state control altogether. I know the education system here is many layered, including local body controls, but it is beyond the understanding of this NZer to explain further. I noticed a story, perhaps illustrating what is wanted. This described a successful primary Foundation school in a downtrodden, violent London locality that has bought an empty school building in the countryside for a secondary school. 350 children from their locality can attend this as weekly boarders, remote from the harsh streets of their homes. A large part of the funds to buy the property came from profitable business activity which the primary school runs.

The campaign slogan words for the two parties are "future" for Labour, and "togetherness" for Conservatives. But much media comment distinguishes their policies as big government/state control versus small state/people power. To me this distinction maybe a misnomer. The elephant in the room at this election that neither party addresses - as is recognized on the financial pages - is the vital necessity to reduce the deficit, currently 167 billion or 11.6% of GDP, and rally sterling.

The bureaucratic public service, which everyone can criticise, is the obvious target for all parties. Freedom of information requests revealed yesterday that senior civil servants claimed 1 billion on expenses using government issued credit cards last tear, four times higher than in 2002. More on this to come no doubt.

It seems to me that actually the intent of both main parties is to cut government spending by significant cuts in the number of public service employees and increase unpaid involvement in running services. The padding around this concept is in different colours but essentially aren't they both saying – we've run out of money, sort it out yourselves. And that is the reality any incoming government will face. The Conservative approach is a more elaborate disguise of this fundamental, which might be inspiring to some. Labour says, you can't trust the Conservatives on this and we know best.

Only the Liberal Democrat Party seems willing to tell it how it is. Their launch last night was a simple format without the glitz and minus the pretty faces apart from Nick Clegg (I know the leader's name now, and he is just as youthfully handsome as Cameron). Their slogan word is "fairness", and they lay out four critical fairness issues – tax, opportunities for children, civil liberties and the democratic system. Plans for these areas are spelt out in detail and, most significantly, every proposal is costed by a specific cut (e.g. defence, electronic monitoring) and higher taxes for some. They claim this is a first. The deficit must be tackled, this is how we will do it, and this is what our policies will mean for you. I don't have the detail yet as I just saw it on tele but at least it seemed to make sense.

Whether these are good proposals is another matter. One Lib-dem proposal is to cut bank bonuses and split up banks, which they claim are responsible for the recession. Gordon Brown apologised last night in an interview for not regulating banks more – he proposes to hand their regulation over to the Bank of England, to which he gave independence in 1997. The Conservative approach is woolly for me as yet. But one thing puzzles me. If much of UK's wealth now comes from international financial services, not domestic production, how does any government dare interfere with that? What should they do anyway? Neither of the main parties has enlightened the voters so far. But if the people look after unimportant functions like education and the banks look after the economy, what is left to Government to do – hold the hats and referee? It seems only the lib-dems will tread boldly into these hallowed grounds.

All bets must be on the Conservatives so far, but all focus now is on the first Leaders' debate tonight.

(occasional coverage of the UK election campaign continues…)

Margaret Thompson is a director of Scoop Media who is coincidentally on holiday in London during the UK election campaign. The election will be held on May 6th.

ENDS

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