Wednesday, 15 April 2015

UKIP Manifesto 2015

Suzanne Evans launched UKIP's 2015 manifesto today with a surprise gift from the president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, whose office confirmed that there will be no renegotiation of EU treaties until 2019 at the earliest, putting paid once and for all to David Cameron's promises of a renegotiation by 2017.

UKIP's manifesto has been incredibly received, not least because it is the first time a party has had their manifesto independently assessed for economic sense rather than marking their own homework. UKIP's manifesto has been inspected by the Centre for Economics & Business Research, an organisation that provides independent economic forecasts to business and government.

There were some unexpected policies in the manifesto such as an intermediate 30% tax rate for earnings between £45,300 to £55,000, stopping companies from offshoring their profits to avoid paying tax, no means testing of free TV licences or winter fuel payments for pensioners and abolishing the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

I started to pull out the best bits (in my opinion) from the manifesto but Suzanne did such a great job, the best bits turned out to be most of it so rather than reinventing the wheel, you can either read the summary on the UKIP website or download the full manifesto.


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Old Albion's avatar

Old Albion · 517 weeks ago

As I commented yesterday (but the comment didn't appear) Along with labour and the Lib Dems. No mention of England.
The Conservatives with their half-hearted EVoEL are the only party to mention the English democratic defecit.
I see no party to vote for in 2015.
A very competent document.

It has cleverly avoided getting in to 'how' we leave the EU - noting that there is more than one way out is enough a government has resources to do the detail, a political party with 2 MP's doesn't! But it calls for a *referendum* on leaving - rather than taking a UKIP vote as a vote to leave... which is a bit sad.

It has lost a lot of the creativeness that UKIP have shown in the past... maybe this is to avoid interviewers etc focusing on side issues, distracting from the main point.

It also reads quite like a merger of a Conservative and Labour manifesto from the 1980's... 'caring capitalism in an independent UK'... rather than 'Liberty!'.

Politcal/electoral reform has been totally sidelined. Binding referenda watered down, English devolution virtually ignored,
no mention voting reform. When it seem likely the SNP will get 50 seats and balance of power for 1 milliion votes, but UKIP are 'projected' to get 1 seat for 5 million votes(!) something needs to be done...

With such a focus on leaving the EU, there is only so much you can do in one go - maybe this is as much as could be managed in one term.

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