"Earnest on deficit cuts, light on detail" Andy Silvester for the Yorkshire Post
April 21, 2015
9:16 AM
Our Campaign Director, Andy Silvester, has a piece in the Yorkshire Post today on the continuing lack of detail on anything other than spending plans:
Yet, with every day to go until the election, we remain far more clued up on what the parties would spend money on. Rather like the uncle who buys his nephew a drum kit, politicians are very keen on being popular without having to deal with the consequences.The Conservatives, fresh from saying unfunded spending on the NHS was a sure way to destroy it, found £8bn a year down the back of the Treasury sofa to pump into the Health Service.
It was a clear, and expensive, way to shoot Labour’s most energetic electoral fox. Labour promised to spend £2.5bn more than the Tories on the NHS – appar-ently regardless of what that figure is. One is forgiven for thinking our spending on the NHS is destined to remain in some sort of perpetual Penrose Stairs until the economy collapses in on itself. Similarly, all parties that have found more money for childcare, have pledged to protect our Armed Forces, and committed to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.
You can read the full article here.