A two-word phrase in a single sentence from David Cameron’s manifesto speech provides the headlines in several newspapers today. He said:
“The next five years are about turning the good news in our economy into a good life for you and your family”.
The sound bite worked. So the Daily Telegraph’s front page is topped by Return of the good life. And here’s the Times, I’ll bring the good life back to Britain, Cameron promises and the Financial Times Tories break with austerity policies and promise ‘good life’ to voters.
And the others? Yes. Cameron pledges good life for all (Daily Mail); I’ll bring back the sunshine and the good life (Daily Express); Cam in good life promise (Daily Star); “Family guy Cameron promises to deliver the ‘good life’ to all” (Metro).
The Sun comes at it from an angle designed to please its readership by reporting that Cameron has pledged to reward “ordinary” low-paid workers. Its splash headline therefore is “Happy ever grafter”.
The Daily Mirror is, as one might expect of the lone Labour-supporting paper, less ecstatic. Its headline asks “Where’s the £25bn to pay for ‘the good life’?”
The Guardian, the Independent and i eschewed the chance to run “good life” headlines. Again, that’s to be expected of a sceptical non-Tory press.
Aside from the headlines, the leading articles about the Tory manifesto provide greater insights into the papers’ opinions. Several refer to Margaret Thatcher in praise of Cameron’s right-to-buy proposal.
The Times thinks we heard “the authentic and optimistic” Cameron in his promises to working parents, the low-waged and to the NHS. But it also counselled that such pledges depend upon an optimistic reading of Britain’s public finances.
It is not clear, said the paper, that that “waving around... electoral goodies was electoral plan A for a Conservative party that until very recently was talking up the economic risks that still lay ahead. Only six months ago Mr Cameron was warning that the ‘red warning lights are once again flashing on the dashboard of the global economy’”. It continues:
“Opinion polls have, however, cast doubt on the wisdom of the Tories’ ‘hold on to nurse for fear of something worse’ strategy. Surveys have indicated that voters are fed up with the austerity medicine and want public spending to rise again. The prime minister has responded to that mood...
At the heart of the Tory manifesto is an admirable ambition to reward work and invest in education, the two essential underpinnings of social progress.
The Times welcomes Mr Cameron’s commitment to build affordable houses with the proceeds of an expanded right-to-buy policy”.
The Telegraph liked Cameron’s “upbeat message emphasising hope, aspiration and self-reliance” compared to “Labour’s defensive manifesto launch... Ed Miliband’s central theme was a scarcely credible attempt to persuade voters that he has converted to the cause of fiscal probity...
“Mr Cameron, on the other hand, could point to a period of economic success without which the myriad promises spewing out of both party machines would be worthless”.
So the Telegraph believes despite Miliband’s efforts to portray himself as born-again champion of austerity, the simple fact remains that the stewardship of the economy is best left in Tory hands”. But jobs, and fairness, are the key:
“Having helped to put the economy back on an even keel, the problem facing the Conservatives was the impression that the good life they were offering was reserved for better-off home owners and higher-rate taxpayers.
The manifesto counters this with a bold plan to extend home ownership through a new rightto-buy scheme encompassing housing association properties and by improving markedly the help for families with child-care costs”.
The Mail was pleased with Cameron’s “hugely assured performance” when outlining “a distinctively Tory vision of a Britain”. It continued:
“This was the vision of a leader looking ahead, with infectious hope and a refreshingly Tory sense of purpose. Not for him Ed Miliband’s all-powerful state, regulating every spit and cough of our lives and seizing money from those who earn it to give to those who don’t.
In Mr Cameron’s ‘buccaneering, worldbeating, can-do’ Britain, families will be able to decide for themselves how they spend their wages...
But perhaps most welcome is the pledge to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants... Thus, Mr Cameron keeps burning the flame lit by Margaret Thatcher – a prime minister who truly understood the meaning of aspiration (and how typical of the monstrous hypocrisy of the Left that so many state-subsidised housing association landlords, with six-figure salaries and handsome homes of their own, wish to deny their tenants the same security and independence)”.
The Sun views the Tory promises as a REAL boost for the poor, praising the 30 hours’ free childcare a week for working mothers; the right-to-buy proposal and exemption of minimum wage earners from income tax.
Like the Mail, it nods to Cameron’s adoption of Margaret Thatcher-style policies to empower “ordinary people to improve their lives”.
The Financial Times praises Cameron’s shift “to a more positive message” rather than slamming Miliband and sees it as a counter to the perception that the Tories are “on the side of the well-to-do”.
And it also sees it in historic terms as an echo of the Conservatives’ most successful post-war leader:
“The Tory manifesto injects some sorely needed ‘one nation’ rhetoric which draws on the blue collar conservatism that powered Margaret Thatcher to three election victories.
This may be understandable in terms of electoral positioning and the pressing need for a breakthroughin the polls which have been stubbornly deadlocked”.
But the FT thinks “Cameron has chosen some questionable policies to make the point”, arguing that “the pledge to extend the right to buy to 800,000 social housing tenants will do nothing to address Britain’s acute housing shortage. It may even choke off the supply of new social properties”. It continues:
“The Tory move risks simply showering unearned rewards on those who happen to be renting existing stock”.
It concludes: “In his quest for electoral traction, the prime minister should beware of discarding what remains theTories’ strongest suit”.
The Guardian is unconvinced by Cameron’s transformation of the Tories into a “free-spending party of the workers”. It continues:
“As with Labour, the counter-intuitive campaign message is a calculated political risk. Unlike Labour’s smart gamble, however, this Conservative reinvention doesn’t stack up”. But it concedes that “there was an unmissable feelgood theme to the launch that has been conspicuously absent from the party campaign so far”. It said:
“Mr Cameron’s presentation was so set on being upbeat that it said much less about many mean-spirited commitments lurking in the manifesto itself.
The continuing retreat on alternative energy, for instance – subsidies for onshore wind farms ended – got no mention. Nor did the nasty pledge for a further freeze in the BBC licence fee. Nor did the further dilution of any reform of the House of Lords. Nor did the snooper’s charter, which the Tories would reintroduce if they form the next government”.
For the Guardian, the manifesto launch “was a clever attempt to sell a false prospectus”.
The Independent is unconvinced by the right-to-buy proposal, arguing that Thatcher’s original adoption of that policy “helped to create our contemporary housing crisis”. Its consequence has been “a chronic shortage of local authority accommodation and large waiting lists for those properties that remain”.
It states: “Estimates suggest more than a third of the flogged council stock is now in the hands of private landlords. And who are their tenants? Families who, in the past, would have been housed directly by councils”. It continued:
“It was... notable that the reaction to the Tories’ right to buy manifesto pledge from the housing industry yesterday was uniformly negative. The hostility from the likes of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed, in particular, how times have changed.
The sickness at the heart of housing today is not a lack of aspiration from council and housing association tenants but a chronic shortage of new housing supply. We are simply not building enough new homes.
The Tories’ 1980s-infused policy cocktail will do nothing to cure that ailment. Indeed, it threatens to make matters far worse”.
The Express didn’t run a leading article, but its op-ed piece, by Stephen Pollard, was probably an accurate reflection of its view, Tories’ manifesto pledges run rings around Labour’s.