Election update

It's been an interesting election so far. It looks like the Brexit and Lib Dem parties have been squeezed to the benefit of the Tory and Labour parties. It seems similar to 2017 apart from the relative trajectories of the two main parties. It seems that the Tories are picking up more of the squeezed votes than Labour, which means Jeremy Corbyn is not closing the gap.

The manifestos have all been launched. The Tories seem to be taking it easy and trying not to scare the horses. Labour on the other hand have doubled down on their 2017 profligacy and are promising vast increases in spending and tax rises. I think that this time they will be scaring a lot of people. So much so that I think it will be detrimental to the Labour position.

The debates have been disappointing. The first one, a head to head between Corbyn and Johnson was awful. The time for each answer was short and not allowed to be followed up and some of the questions were rubbish. The second debate was better in a one on one question time format, but the audience was clearly partisan in favour of Corbyn. It was appalling to see the way that Jo Swinson was treated by the very hostile audience. I may disagree with her position but it is sincerely held.

Boris Johnson has held up better than expected. So much better than Theresa May that I think the destination of this election is more like a majority Conservative Government, probably around the 40 mark at a guess. I really want to see Labour hammered, specifically so that it moves towards a more moderate position and away from Marxism. Tony Blair has said that given a choice between a centre-right or hard right party and hard left, the UK will choose one on the right. I don't believe the Tory party is particularly hard right. Most policies, like more doctors, nursers, police etc seem quite centrist to me.

In response to the many questions about austerity I do wish he would say something like:

"Thank you for that question. If I may take a few moments to explain our economic position. In 2010, the UK was running a deficit of roughly £150Bn a year. That is not fake money, it is real money, that we - as a country - have to borrow from money markets. They lend it to us, on the proviso, that we will pay it back. If they think that we won't pay it back they will charge a sky high interest rate or simply refuse to lend us the money.

That is why we needed to reduce that deficit, to give that confidence that we could get on top of our spending in order to pay our debt interest payments. Unfortunately, that did mean we had to make difficult choices. We had to make some cuts, but we were able to give some increases to the NHS and schools. I wish it were more but given the constraints it is what we had to do.

We're now borrowing much less per year, around £30Bn a year and our growing economy will help further in keeping borrowing low. It does mean that we will be able to invest more in the NHS and schools, growing them at a sensible rate, giving confidence that we have Government spending under control.

Labour want to put the squeeze on companies, those that pay us and make things for us. They will pass on those costs. But Labour also want to immediately increase the borrowing back to levels near to £150Bn a year, each and every year. Quickly the money markets will lose faith in us and then our interest rates will rise and they may stop lending to us. We would quickly find ourselves in the position that Greece and latterly Venezuela find themselves in. A contracting economy, private companies scared to invest, or worried about being nationalised at a whim, the Government taking ever more control over failure and the richest heading off shore and taxes being raised on those remaining just to keep us going.

It's called socialism.

It always starts the same, with lofty but wonderful ideals. But it always - always - ends the same. The poorest getting poorer, in fact everyone getting poorer. In Venezuela people are eating their own pets.

If Jeremy Corbyn is elected and puts his programme into effect, then I suggest everyone uses their savings from their free broadband to buy a cook book for an enticing recipe for Cat soup. Socialism does not work and never has. Do you want to be part of the latest failed experiment? No, because it ruins lives. Capitalism is not perfect but is the best system that has been devised yet. Don't let Labour wreck our wonderful country."

I could go on!

Thankfully, I don't think our country will go for the experiment. We don't go for big revolutions in this country, we tend to go for smaller steps.

Squiffy.