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UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s election manifesto combines traditionally socialist rhetoric with a lack of specific spending promises. With it, May is making a play for center-left voters the way Tony Blair once made a play for center-right ones; she’s joining a European trend — a kind of hybrid right-left is emerging as traditional political divisions are erased.
“Conservatism is not and never has been the philosophy described by caricaturists,” the manifesto declares. “We do not believe in untrammeled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality.” Such an ideological pledge would have looked out of place in David Cameron’s 2015 election program, a far more specific document that contained many of the same promises that May now makes again (such as the one to raise the tax-free income threshold to 12,500 pounds ($16,260) and the higher tax bracket threshold to 50,000 pounds).
May’s manifesto is — in tone and stated intention — one of a relatively interventionist, redistributive state. The Conservatives want to regulate top executives’ pay and how many immigrants firms can hire. They want to intervene in mergers and acquisitions based on the potential investors’ country of origin and set immigration quotas. The manifesto promises protection to gig economy workers, a million more trees in British cities and “the biggest investment in railways since Victorian times.” In 2015, Cameron talked about getting rid of fiscal deficits by 2019. May’s manifesto puts that off until “the middle of the next decade.” The Labour Party — which has released a no holds barred tax-and-spend plan — accuses the Conservatives of making 60 unfunded spending commitments.
But May hasn’t really gone socialist. Her promises sound grander than they actually are. For example, the manifesto talks about raising the country’s minimum wage from the current 7.50 pounds an hour to 60 percent of median earnings by 2020 and then increase it annually at the same rate as the median wage. Given the current median wage of 27,000 pounds, that promise would only take the minimum wage to 7.80 an hour.
The promise to increase spending on the UK’s universal health care system, the National Health Service, “by a minimum of 8 billion pounds in real terms over the next five years,” echoes David Cameron’s commitment. But the government is actually going back on an earlier Conservative plan to increase NHS funding by 0.6 percent a year starting in 2017; 8 billion pounds is about 0.6 percent of this year’s 123.7 billion pound budget. The May plan doesn’t specify what the actual funding commitment is each year.
May’s other promises are equally careful. She would increase school funding — but at the cost of scrapping hot meals for some schoolchildren (poorer children will still receive hot lunches and breakfasts). She’d let elderly people keep more of their estate after care costs — but force some of them to pay for these costs with their homes, to be sold after their death.
It’s a socialist program without socialist spending. One could argue that the lack of meaningful commitments makes it a pointless exercise, but it’s not. It’s a hybrid program, like the one on which Germany’s grand coalition of the center-right and the center-left governs the country or French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan that tries to bring together strong worker protections and pro-business measures such as tax cuts.
The traditional categories of left and right are growing obsolete, in large part thanks to the populist blitzkrieg of 2016 and 2017. Even in countries where populists have been defeated, such as the Netherlands and France, mainstream political forces must band together to hold the center. That’s not easy. Dutch centrists have just failed to form a coalition government because of differences on immigration — an issue shaped by the nationalist party that hasn’t been invited to take part.
Macron’s poaching from the once dominant but now moribund Socialist Party and the divided Republican party hasn’t yet assured strong support for him in the parliament, which the French will elect next month. In Germany, the centrist coalition formed after the 2013 election has worked well, but both parties are exhausted by the constant need for bargaining and compromise and would rather be rid of each other — something, however, that may prove impossible in the September election. In Austria, a similar grand coalition has broken down, and an early election this fall may force one of the mainstream parties to try to co-opt the populist alternative, the Freedom Party.
May’s situation is unique in that she faces no such challenges. Her party inherits the fruit of the populist victory in the Brexit referendum because there’s no one else to capitalize on it. The nationalist UK Independence Party is in shambles since Nigel Farage, the man who made it a real political force, left its leadership and since it’s key issue — Brexit — was settled by last June’s referendum. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn appears to have no appetite for winning, just for staking out extreme positions.
So all May needs to do is pretend the Conservatives are an all-encompassing party that covers the UKIP and moderate Labour agendas. Judging by the manifesto, that comes easy to her, especially since her massive poll advantage makes it unnecessary for her to make any meaningful commitments.
— Bloomberg
Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru