Johnson launches Tory manifesto with pledge on taxes

Bloomberg

British PM Boris Johnson pledged his Conservatives won’t raise income tax, value-added tax or national insurance rates as he unveiled the party’s programme for government on Sunday. He also promised that the National Health Service will not be “on the table” in trade talks.
The Tories hold a double-digit lead in most opinion polls heading into the December 12 general election, and one analysis suggests the party will win a 48-seat majority in the House of Commons.
The first Scottish poll of the electoral campaign shows the Scottish National Party (SNP) gaining ground, while suggesting Labour may lose six of the seven seats it won north of the border in 2017.
The Panelbase poll of 1,009 voters in the Sunday Times puts the SNP on 40%, up from 37% in 2017 with Labour — which once dominated Scotland’s seats in the Westminster Parliament — down to 20% from 27%.
The Liberal Democrats are up to 11% from 7%, and the ruling Conservatives are down a point on 28%.
Because of the distribution of support, the poll would see Labour only retain the Edinburgh South seat held by Ian Murray, a critic of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, according to the Sunday Times.
The SNP would win 41 seats, up from 35, while the Liberal Democrats would gain one seat, to hold five in total. The Tories would lose just one seat, leaving them with 12.
Scottish Politics have proven volatile in recent general elections. In 2010, Labour won 41 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats.
Five years later, the SNP seized all but three of them, with the traditional big three parties claiming one apiece. In 2017, the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats took a combined 21 seats off the SNP, though it remained the biggest party by a considerable margin, with 35.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson, who kicked off her election campaign saying she could be the next prime minister, acknowledged on Sunday that her party’s chances have been hit by the Brexit Party’s decision not to stand in Conservative-held seats.
“Clearly there’s been a squeeze,” Swinson told the BBC. “The result of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage stitching up that deal between them has clearly affected the shape of that campaign.”
Still, she said the Liberal Democrats are the “best-placed party to stop” Johnson’s Conservatives getting a majority. “We are making real inroads, but we need to make sure we win those seats from the Conservatives and we are in a position to do that in a way that Labour simply is not,” she said.