Britain’s governing Conservative (Tory) Party has bizarrely accused the opposition Labour Party of pursuing a policy platform essentially indistinguishable from their own.
“Labour’s mission is clear (sort of),” they wrote in what was presumably intended to be a humourous Twitter post, accompanied by a wilting rose emoji.
The bulk of the post was taken up with a digital poster outlining Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s alleged “5 missions”, namely:
- Uncontrolled immigration
- Reckless Spending
- Higher Debt
- Softer Sentences
- Change Position
However, while Labour does have a long track record of promoting looser border controls, wasteful tax-and-spend economic policies, and weakness on criminal justice, the Conservatives could equally be accused of pursuing the exactly the same “missions” they say Sir Keir is out to accomplish.
On immigration, in particular, the Tories have allowed illegal immigration to grow more out of control, with the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats growing by the thousands and then tens of thousands a year since they were first declared a “major incident” in 2018, with the cost of hosting them at the taxpayers’ expense in accommodation including luxury hotels now running into billions per year.
Legal mass immigration, meanwhile, they have also increased to record levels, with no end to the increases in sight — despite having pledged to reduce the annual net influx “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” ahead of the 2010, 2015, and 2017 elections, and making a vaguer promise to reduce it “overall” in 2019.
This is likely because, as George Osborne, David Cameron’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, revealed after the European Union referendum, party leaders actually completely disagree with their voters on immigration and actively chose to break their promises on the issue.
As for “reckless spending” and “higher debt”, both have increased exponentially since the then-Cameron-led Conservative Party regained office from Labour in 2010 — particularly during the Wuhan virus pandemic when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was Chancellor (finance minister).
Indeed, while the party sells itself as a party of fiscal responsibility and low taxes, Sunak is actually pursuing punishing tax rises in a likely vain effort to repair the parlous state of the country’s finances, and scrapped a number of minor tax cuts by his short-lived predecessor Liz Truss after replacing her as leader following an undemocratic internal coup.
As for “softer sentences”, the Tories abolished indeterminate imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences which could be given to “an offender convicted of one or more specified serious violent or sexual offence” in 2012 — partly to appease the European Court of Human Rights, which they have chosen to remain subject to — and in 2022 they made it easier for criminals previously released from prison on licence after being handed IPPs to have their licence conditions revoked.