Every year, from mid-September onwards, a vague feeling of unease starts to fill my soul. A feeling of a bit of anxiety, maybe even bordering on fear.
If you’re thinking that the lead up to the time change at the end of October, or even that spookiest day of the year, Hallowe’en, is to blame - you’d be quite wrong.
My sense of imbalance comes from a completely different place - party conference season, and in particular, what exact batshittery will be announced by the Tories and just how deep they’ll be diving head first into Thatcherism cosplay.
Now, last year, I wrote that the Tories really need to do better. The country needs them to actually be okay - because if they’re not, Farage and his bumbling band of bloviators will push through, and at the very least, become the opposition if not, God forbid, form the next government.
Looking at where we are a year on, things have definitely changed - but not in the way I meant it.
The Tories have been slowly ticking up again in the polls, but as far as I can tell, that has less to do with them actually showing contrition and coming up with non-batshit policies as I suggested last year, and more to do with Reform UK not so slowly self-imploding on the back of multiple financial scandals, a hard pivot to the more racist among the population and Nigel Farage’s ego that was always going to get in everyone’s way. This is not even mentioning the fact that Reform UK has become home for the Tories that were even too deranged for a party that at one point was nattering on about seven bins.
Looking at the actual policy though - things have not got better since last year - and arguably, may have even got worse, and I’ll briefly touch on a few of them below.
Make New Homes Cheaper by up to £50k by Stripping Out Requirements
The UK has, and has had, a housing crisis for the past few decades - largely spurred on by that good old Conservative Demi-God herself, Margaret Thatcher, selling off council housing with no real plan to replace the social housing that was lost, and subsequently made worse by the sheer inability of this country to actually build shelter.
This particular plan from the Tories, delivered with worrying enthusiasm by Andrew Griffith, the Shadow Chancellor, would strip out the Future Homes Standard, which basically asks that houses be built in a way that makes them zero-carbon ready and, as the name implies, fit for the future. The package would also replace Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy with a single charge, and abolish stamp duty.
All in, the Tories reckon it will knock up to £50k off the price of a new home.
There probably is some truth to the need for some deregulation. I have no doubt that some of the regulations that have made their way into building regulations over the years have become outdated, overlap with multiple others and the whole system is in desperate need of review.
The bit that makes me laugh though is the promise that buyers will see that £50k.
I will remind you that houses in the United Kingdom are built, by and large, by property developers - all of whom just love themselves some nice fat profits.
Nothing in this plan guarantees that the savings on building costs end up in the buyer’s pocket. Some of it could become developer profit, some could get swallowed up by higher land prices, and yes, some might make a few marginal sites viable enough to build on.
What it isn’t is a £50k cheque with your name on it. Stripping out the Future Homes Standard on the back of that promise is, for me, a complete no-go.
Andrew Griffith was not done though, with his idea to…
Abolish the Environment Agency and Natural England
Yup.
More cutting, and absolutely no surprise here. Griffith explained that their plan to get rid of some rather important sounding agencies would all be okay, as their work would largely just transfer back to Defra.
Which is fine, but when you consider that these responsibilities include things like managing flood risk, monitoring pollution and scrutinising environmental damage, you’ll realise that these are rather important, no? That work doesn’t disappear when the agency does. The flood defences still need maintaining, the rivers still need testing and the conservation work still needs doing. So where exactly is the saving, and what would Defra do better?
I’ve yet to hear an answer to either.
We are in serious trouble when it comes to climate change, and coping with it takes capable institutions with the expertise and the people to do the job. The last thing we should be doing is defunding, cancelling or weakening the bodies we’re going to need the most to plan for what is becoming a grim future.
Making People Poorer Until They Find A Job
No Tory conference would be complete without finding a way to punch down, and they have done so as usual with gusto.
Their latest proposal is the “Back to Work” card, something that just smacks of a voucher that can only ever be used to pay for your bus fare to an interview. The main point of it is that it restricts exactly what you can and can’t buy with your benefits, alongside how much money you receive. This wasn’t strictly a conference announcement - it was announced in the run-up to conference - but boy are they going on about it!
Under the plans as published, people who are assessed to be fit for work and required to look for a job would get six months on the normal Universal Credit rules. After the six months, keeping the full Universal Credit standard allowance (the basic payment for living costs, separate from any help with housing or children) would depend on what their previous employment looked like. Anyone who doesn’t have enough qualifying work history would then be shifted along to what’s called a “Subsistence Allowance” at a 30% reduced rate.
To add to this, the remaining support would come through a prepaid card that restricts both spending and access to cash, blocking:
Alcohol
Cigarettes
Gambling
Cash withdrawals.
Because nothing says “small government” quite like the government deciding what you’re allowed to buy.
Helping people back into work is a good thing. Giving proper, holistic employment support, actual useful training, support with transport and childcare that doesn’t cost as much as your mortgage are all things that are necessary to help people back to work.
This is not one of those things.
There’s also a little bit of an issue that’s being glossed over when it comes to how benefits are administered - Universal Credit already has incredibly strict rules and sanctions for people who fail to meet their work-related obligations without good reason. This proposal by the Tories could end up cutting a claimant’s allowance even if they stuck to every single rule, attended every single appointment and applied for every job under the sun.
Their six months could simply run out before anyone hires them, through no fault of their own.
As policies go, this is absolutely one that has the most Tory stench about it. Hard to implement, with a little side of cruelty and no demonstrated route into work.
Thatcher would be proud.
Tax Cuts - but who pays?
If there is anything that a Tory loves to cut more than benefits, it’s taxes - and if it’s a rich person saving a few pounds, that leaves the whole party positively tumescent with delight.
This year’s tax cuts were, to be honest, more of the same, and boiled down to:
Reversing the changes to agricultural and business inheritance-tax reliefs.
Removing VAT on private school fees.
Abolishing business rates for qualifying high-street businesses.
Support for the abolition of inheritance tax as a whole.
The headline pledges being promoted at conference include:
Scrapping the so-called “Mansion Tax”, Labour’s high-value council tax surcharge, which is due to start in April 2028.
Abolishing stamp duty on primary homes.
Other commitments in the package include:
Restoring tax-free shopping for overseas visitors.
Removing VAT on household energy bills for three years.
Abolishing the Energy Profits Levy.
Getting rid of carbon pricing and the associated Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
As you can tell, the scissors were out in full force again this year, and this is without even mentioning Griffith’s stated ambition to scrap at least one tax in every Budget - very à la Nigel Lawson.
But who exactly pays for all this largesse?
Griffith insists tax cuts will only come “when we can afford to do so”, and the spending cuts on offer are the usual suspects: civil service and arm’s-length body headcount, overseas aid, Net Zero subsidies, government advertising, health tourism and what the party calls student loan abuse. The party’s published programme puts the whole savings package at £47 billion, with £23 billion of that coming from welfare, and it claims £900 million a year from cutting student loans for non-UK nationals.
So the numbers exist. Whether they’re credible, deliverable or worth the consequences is another matter. Nearly half of that £47 billion is meant to come from welfare, and the benefits card above, which the party estimates would save £538 million a year - all of which tells you exactly where they’ll be looking first to fund those tex cuts.
Having a quick glance at these taxes, there is some relief for working people. VAT off energy bills and lower business rates will help plenty of households and small-business owners, but several of the most prominent cuts go directly to people with substantial estates to pass on, homes worth over £2 million and children in private schools, while the savings meant to pay for it all lean hardest on people on benefits.
It’s amazing how easy those “hard decisions” are when you’re not the one living with the hard outcomes.
I will caveat at this point that not everything on the menu is completely batshit.
Ending the childcare cliff edge, where earning a little more can leave working parents thousands of pounds worse off, is a sensible idea that is long overdue, and stamp duty at its current levels is a stupid tax that gums up the housing market by punishing people for moving, and reforming it is a reasonable thing to want.
I’d want to see the costings before cheering, but these are the kinds of policies that would make me take the Tories seriously again1 - which is exactly what I said last year I wanted to be able to do.
The Tories are in a better place this year than they were last, this is true. It’s also true that they have come from rock bottom, and any improvement is comparatively large.
There will be many people out there saying that Kemi Badenoch is turning things around. That she’s finally getting into her stride - “just look at the polls!”
But looking at what they’re actually proposing, I struggle to see what has changed, or what exactly they’ve learnt from being booted out so comprehensively in 2024.
Most of their apparent recovery looks to me like the natural consequence of Reform shitting itself in public while the Tories stand far enough away to avoid the splash.
A year on, I still want them to do better, and apparently, a year on, that is still asking too bloody much.
I am currently looking for feedback on Bearly Politics. If you haven’t done so yet, I would be very grateful if you could fill out the below survey, which I promise will only happen once a year.
By “take the Tories seriously” I really mean not loudly laughing whenever I see them try to do something and is not any indication that I would ever vote for them. Ever. In a million years.
Yessssss. They are absolutely not my cup of tea. The shock of what they wish to do is still somewhat flooring as it just is more of the same of what has gone before. I particularly think that they have not been reading the best runes as going back to letting hunting rip is not one to entice voters from what I’ve been seeing. I’m somewhat disgruntled that they must be the opposition but that is far better than Nigel’s and Rupert’s lot. Also eminently pleased to forward this to others who will be relieved that their views have been so well expressed. Huzzah!
General Tory policy could be summed up as -
To those who have much, more.
To those who have little, less.