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Guardian article by Paul Krugman

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The long read: The case for cuts was a lie. Why does Britain still believe it?

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Election campaign

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preview and links

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Election pledges

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Ahead of Monday's Budget, Plaid Cymru has called for a range of measures to "rebalance the entrenched economic injustice" of the UK. Jonathan Edwards MP, emphasised that the UK economy is already "decoupling" from the rest of Europe and faces huge threats as the March 2019 Brexit deadline looms.

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Ahead of Monday's Budget, Plaid Cymru has called for a range of measures to "rebalance the entrenched economic injustice" of the UK.

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Election pledges

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The Green party has launched an ambitious election manifesto based around ending economic austerity and highlighting the environmental crisis, insisting its plans are practical and fair, despite costing an extra £200bn a year.

The party's leader, Natalie Bennett, announcing the manifesto alongside its sole MP, Caroline Lucas, said voters could transform British politics by voting Green in sufficient numbers on 7 May.

"This is a new kind of politics, the end of politics as usual, the business-as-usual politics that accepts politics and society being run for the benefit of the few, not the many," she said.

Key elements of the Greens' plans were connected to social justice, she said. "No one in this, the world's sixth-richest economy, should fear not being able to put food on the table or not being able to keep a roof over their head. This is a politics that is founded in humanity."

While Bennett and Lucas stressed what they see as the increasingly mainstream position of the Greens in a possible post-election coalition, the 84-page manifesto remains avowedly radical in many areas, with promises including a combined £85bn of spending on home insulation, renewable energy and flood defences, a significant increase in pensions and welfare benefits, renationalising the railways and a £10 an hour minimum wage by 2020.

More fundamentally, the party said, the UK should abandon an economic policy based on growth at all costs, and rebuild society around equality.

Other more specific promises include fully free social care, half a million new homes by 2020, and animal welfare policies such as bans on foie gras, fur imports and the use of whips in horse racing, and CCTV in every slaughterhouse.

The new policies would cost a total of £198bn a year in additional public spending by the end of the next parliament, according to calculations at the end of the manifesto. The party said this would be funded by savings, such as cancelling the replacement for Trident, and new taxes, mainly aimed at the wealthy.

The calculations include an ambitious £30bn a year by 2019 from crackdowns on tax avoidance and evasion, and £25bn from a 2% annual wealth tax on those whose assets are worth a combined £3m or more.

Introducing the plans at the Arcola theatre in east London - chosen because it runs a parallel fuel cell business and aims to become carbon neutral - Bennett said her party wanted to end "the disastrous policy of austerity".

This was "making the poor, the disadvantaged and the young pay for the greed and the fraud of the bankers".

For too long, Bennett argued, the first-past-the-post electoral system had given voters a choice of the lesser of two evils with Labour and the Conservatives.

"You have two barely separable parties jostling for the votes of a few swing voters in swing seats. That's the kind of politics we have now. A kind of politics that has left so many people disappointed, even depressed."

Bennett said that during this month's seven-way party leaders' TV debate she had been the only person to talk about climate change.

Lucas spoke in greater detail about the party's environmental pledges, saying such ideas were vital and had been neglected amid the austerity drive. "It's not something that can be discarded when times are tough, like that extra cappuccino on the way to work," she said.

The party pledged £45bn to give householders a £5,000 grant to insulate their properties, concentrating on the most deprived areas. Lucas said about 9,000 people a year died prematurely in Britain because of cold homes, many more than on the roads, so the Greens' policy was not only fair but practical, as it would permanently lower energy use and create 100,000 jobs.

Luca said the Greens would support any Labour government on a case-by-case basis, giving the party a good opportunity to push its priorities. But she and Bennett refused to say whether Labour's renewed commitment to austerity could raise problems.

"It's very difficult at this point in time, with a great deal of uncertainty, to talk through any negotiations on 8 May," Bennett said.

The manifesto contains several radical ideas, including the proposal that all new homes should be built using the Passivhaus system, a German-devised standard which aims to make properties efficient in heating and cooling. On rented housing the Greens would said they would introduce controlled rents and five-year tenancies.
Can the Greens afford to pay for their costly election manifesto pledges?
Significant spending is aimed at pensions and welfare, with a planned new citizens' pension of £310 a week for a couple and £180 for single people. On education, the compulsory school age would rise to seven, but with free, voluntary provision before then.

The party will expect significant scrutiny of its financial calculations, especially whether measures like a "Robin Hood tax" on financial transactions and the wealth tax - the latter of which, the party admits, has an "uncertain" yield - will finance the extra spending.

Asked how the party planned to pay for the more generous welfare and pensions provisions, Bennett referred the questioner to the tables in the manifesto. "It's all set out there, going through the details at this point isn't a very useful thing."
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Green party launches manifesto aimed at ending 'disastrous policy of austerity'

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The Green party has launched an ambitious election manifesto based around ending economic austerity and highlighting the environmental crisis, insisting its plans are practical and fair, despite costing an extra £200bn a year. The party's leader, Natalie Bennett, announcing the manifesto alongside its sole MP, Caroline Lucas, said voters could transform British politics by voting Green in sufficient numbers on 7 May.