Who To Vote For: Part 1

With the new year comes a lot of responsibility for us Britons. For on the 7^th May, our General Election will be held, the first since the country came out of recession in 2012. A recent online poll at voteforpolicies.org.uk has been anonymously pitting parties against each other policy for policy, with surprising results. Turns out 26% of people who took the poll should be voting Green, followed by Labour at 20% and the Lib Dems at 16%. It’s a starkly different picture to the one seen in election forecasts or newspapers. This mini series of posts will run amid my usual postulations, and seeks to clarify the positions of 5 Major Parties on some key areas. These will be Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dem, UKIP and Greens. Knowledge is power, in this case the power to avoid being a political worm, blindly tunnelling towards whoever stamps their feet the hardest.

So with politicians lacing up their boots for the Campaign Trail as 2015 goes on, it’s time to wise up on policies. Let’s start with a big one- what exactly are the 5 Major parties’ Economic Policies? (Based on what they have said so far).

Conservatives

‘Cutting the deficit’ is the key slogan. Osborne’s got his pruning shears out for this one, with plans to eliminate the deficit by 2018, and to run a surplus of £23 billion by 2020. This means that even once we are out of the red, the Tories wish to continue cutting spending. All of this will be achieved by lowering government outgoings as opposed to increasing taxes (Hello Conservatism!) The party will be shouting about a personal tax allowance of £12,500 and a Fuel Duty Freeze, but have been keeping quiet about where Austerity measures will hit hardest. Cameron wishes to increase the 40% tax bracket up to a £50 grand salary.There is also, naturally, a focus on businesses, with promised cuts to corporation tax and jobs tax, as well as scrapping the job tax for under 21s. Currently revealed figures suggest Cameron’s plans save high earners £649 a year, and low earners just £17.

Labour

The Labour approach is a different matter, they plan to balance the books by getting more people into work, and by making that work pay. Labour have made promises to raise minimum wage to £8, cut income tax, and award tax breaks to companies that sign up to pay employees a living wage, in a mission to end the ‘cost of living crisis’. They also have interesting plans to form a British investment bank to support small businesses. They will maintain austerity measures already in place, and introduce mansion tax on homes over £2 million. They also have plans to cap social security including winter fuel allowances and child benefits- trying to get that ‘over-spending’ reputation in check, perhaps?

Liberal Democrats

The Lib Dems promise to ‘anchor in the centre ground’ if they win the election. This means raising the personal tax allowance to £12,500. They also plan to promote apprenticeships, cut business tax and maintain the current science budget. Their plan appears moderate at the current time, but they haven’t revealed much as yet, and higher earners still win out- saving £203 a year compared to £18 for the poorest families.

UKIP

UKIP wish to cut taxes, introducing a personal allowance equal to minimum wage and abolishing inheritance tax. They wish to lower the income tax rate from 40 to 35p for salaries between 42k and 55k, to the benefit of high earners, who would save £1143 a year. For business, there is little mention of start-ups, the focus is on instigating a minimum floor rate tax for big businesses, whereby they pay tax as a percentage of the UK turnover.

Green

The Greens have a drastically different view. Instead of a personal allowance, they would introduce a Citizen’s Income equal to annual living costs as an unearned right. This also falls under the Welfare bracket, which I will discuss later in this series. They plan to tweak inheritance tax to become accessions tax, meaning being taxed for gifts given whilst the donor is alive, but the threshold would be as such that ordinary people wouldn’t notice the change. Corporation Tax will remain based on net profits, but with higher rates for big businesses. They also wish to phase out VAT, and cut any Capital Gains Tax exemptions beyond a persons own home. And then there’s the Eco-Taxes on certain products and production methods, and Land Value Tax instead of Council Tax. Full of ideas this lot.

So, What Does It All Mean?

With all of the exaggerations we are subjected to from politicians, it has been shamefully difficult to find trust worthy figures. This series will aim to cut through the spin and get to the point. Whatever your vote, it should be an informed one. As for my take on all of this, it appears to me that Labour and the Conservatives are both still pushing a rather dejecting message of Austerity, in the Tories case, it seems this is a larger ruse, designed to shrink the role of Government. Meanwhile the Lib Dems are plugging a now stale rhetoric of being the ‘alternative’, a concept that just doesn’t stand any more with the rise of UKIP and the Greens. UKIP and the Green Party will be very interesting in the coming decade, one harking back to a pre-EU, Big Business right wing and the other looking forward, with a completely unique manifesto that cannot adequately be summed up as simply ‘more Left than Labour’.

It would be great to hear some opinions on these policies, so comment below, and keep your eyes peeled for the rest of this fortnightly series amid my usual posts. Next time we will look at the different approaches to the EU and Immigration, and I have a feeling this could get quite heated.