Empty promises

Prime minister David Cameron addressed the Conservative Party Conference this afternoon (Wednesday October 1), making wildly improbable promises, in a desperate bid to present the ailing Tory party in a more appealing light.

 
Rousing rhetoric, however, falls under the weight of Cameron’s contradictory pledges. Promising mountains of tax cuts, mostly benefiting the already wealthy, combined with a vague commitment to protect the NHS, Cameron has given us another dose of zany Tory maths that simply does not compute. Here’s a rundown of Cameron’s most egregious assertions.

 
Tax cuts for the richest – again

 
Cameron loves to rail against the “something-for-nothing” culture. With his tax cut plans revealed today, he’s promoting this very culture among the already wealthy. Cameron pledged to raise the income tax allowance from £10,500 to £12,500, while also raising the threshold at which the 40p tax rate kicks in from £41,900 to £50,000. He’s dressed these tax giveaways up in the garb of tax cuts for average people.

 
But as an Institute for Fiscal Studies report noted, raising the income tax allowance would almost exclusively benefit the top half of the income distribution. What’s more, this tax measure could very actually end up hurting the nation’s poorest working families – a raise in the income tax allowance might see 40 per cent of families in the second and third lowest decile groups lose extra income from reduced benefits.

 
Raising the threshold for the 40p tax rate again benefits the richest in the nation, right below the top 10 per cent of earners, and would do nothing for the so-called “squeezed middle,” according to think tank CentreForum.

 
Hands off the NHS?

 
The mainstream media was abuzz with Cameron’s announcement that he would ring-fence the NHS from budget cuts. He additionally made a typically vague pledge to “invest more” in the health service. But beyond an emotional appeal designed to shallowly tug at the heartstrings of those concerned about the future of the NHS, Cameron’s promises were entirely devoid of content.

 
After all, with a tax cut plan that will cost the nation £7.2bn a year by 2020 in order to line the pockets of the already wealthy, plugging in the NHS funding gap will necessarily mean hefty cuts elsewhere. What’s more, Cameron’s history of selling off the NHS means his vague and empty promises can only be taken with a grain of salt.

 
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey explained, “The prime minister promised no top down reorganisation of the NHS but billions of pounds are being squandered on a reorganisation that has already handed 70 per cent of NHS contracts to the private sector. David Cameron did not have a mandate to sell-off our NHS – no one voted for it.

 
“Money the Tories are claiming to protect, is being handed over to privateers that put profits before people,” he added. “If the PM cares so much about the NHS why has he refused to commit to protecting it from the EU-US trade agreement called TTIP, which would mean the irreversible privatisation of our health?”

 
McCluskey scoffed at Cameron’s disingenuous claims to be the guardian of the NHS.

 
“His efforts to position himself as the saviour of the NHS are simply insulting,” McCluskey said. “This will not cut it with those who rely on a struggling service, the public who see it being gift-wrapped for big business and certainly not with the men and women holding it together, in despair at what his government is doing to our most important public service. The bald truth is that the NHS is being privatised before our very eyes and will not survive another five years of Tory government.”

 
Kowtowing to UKIP

 
In a desperate bid to stem the UKIP threat, Cameron made additional populist-appeasing vows to restrict movement within the EU as a key part of negotiations before an in-out EU referendum in 2017.

 
Cameron pledged to scrap the human rights act and replace it with a “bill of rights,” even though the move would be legally questionable and would transform the UK’s relationship with the European court of human rights. As the Mirror reported today, doing this successfully would give the nation the dubious honour of being one of three European countries not to have ratified the convention on human rights – two of which include Kazakhstan and Belarus, nations known for human rights abuses.

 
Balancing the books on the backs of the poor

 
Vowing to balance the budget “with spending cuts alone”, Cameron pledged to hollow out benefits for the working poor. This would entail £3bn a year cuts, along with a two-year freeze on benefits and tax credits for 10m households, many of which have already suffered under several long years of austerity.

 
McCluskey commented, “The truth is that David Cameron is promising not just more of the same but a whole new round of faster, deeper cuts, finishing the job of destroying our public services.

 
“The millions of working poor in this country will not be helped but hounded, pilloried by ministers who have never faced the choice between eating and heating,” he added. “Our young people will be left without hope or expectations of a job, a living wage or even a roof over their heads.”

 
In response to Cameron’s concluding remarks – that there was only “one real choice”, between Labour and Conservative – McCluskey said, “Yes, our nations absolutely have a stark choice. It is between a government for the people and a government for the privileged. Next May, Cameron and his cronies should be shown the door.”