No doubt, Mrs May's claque had reasons for setting her on the platform in Halifax yesterday, to deliver a speech of almost grandiloquent pompousity; and of equal vacuity. It would appear that they [and she] are so confident of victory in the coming election that the detail of the speech - other than the quaintly anachronistic phraseology - was unimportant.
Inevitably, she reiterated her target of reducing 'net immigration' to a maximum of 999,999 souls by a date to be announced. Later in the day her Defence Secretary admitted that there might be an 'economic cost' imposed on the nation; but it would not reduce national income immediately because there is no target date from when the policy is expected to take effect. Thus the prime minister's obsession can be tossed into the long grass, at least temporarily and rhetorically.
More significantly, the squalid face of the government has been revealed in the rumour that the government is trying to suppress data on the extent of aggregate overspending by NHS trusts until after the election. The politicos know that the state of the NHS is a very weak spot in the Tories' case, and showing how bad the situation is cannot help them. If the Conservatives win the election and stick to their present policies, people will die: who, in an ideal world, would be saved [at least temporarily] by an adequate health system. That is a material consideration, especially for the elderly who are being freed from the triple lock on their pensions and released from the bus queue by the withdrawal of the service.
The prospect that the Tories are creating is as unwelcome to the most reliable cohort of voters as that set out in the Labour manifesto.
Elections should not be this interesting!
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