UK Election Unchained: Manifestofest!

Week Three highlights of election season. Paddleboards over planes, Tory housing issues

Callum Gordon
5 min readJun 12, 2024

Yes, I can see that you can see that this is not Thursday and I am publishing a day early. But that’s okay because this week is manifesto week, which means there will be nothing funny or interesting happening, just four parties making extremely sensible, long-term policy proposals. My deadline has been brought forward due to the fact I am flying off on holiday to the far-right cesspit of Europe this week, making me an official enemy of the Liberal Democrats. Not because they are averse to far-right cesspits, but because of the frequent flyer tax that was announced with their manifesto on Monday!

Under the plan, the first flight of the year will cost no extra tax, so I’m in the clear for now. Also it’s a Lib Dem policy, so I’m in the clear forever. Even if they get in to government, it’d be just like them to do a reverse-2010 and make flying free when they promised to make it more expensive. Anyway, under these plans, the second flight of your year would be subject to an increased level of tax, then the third flight will be subject to an even more increased level of tax, then even more with the fourth, then more and more and more. Questions have been raised about how much it would cost just for HMRC to keep track of all the flights that people have been on and how they could reasonably tax each flight for one person differently. But again, it’s a Lib Dem policy, so I’m sure the accountants aren’t sweating that much.

Being the headline topic of my weekly round-up is a big win for the Lib Dems and their leader Ed Davey, who has been putting a monstrous shift in trying to make waves this campaign. His cheek muscles must be getting sore from pulling all those goofy, candid faces. It’s a real mark of how far politics has come since Ed Miliband ate a bacon sandwich in 2014 that politicians would now do unspeakable things for publicity like that. If nothing else, a manifesto launch at a theme park certainly makes for a fun day out for the journalists, as they get to watch other people go on rollercoasters.

He’s obviously playing it up but that bar looks conspicuously loose compared to the others

The Tory manifesto launched on Tuesday and, would you believe it, they want to cut taxes. Shortly after it dropped, Rishi Sunak tweeted “You will always be better at spending your own money than the government is”, which is one thing I agree with him on, I don’t recall ever pissing away £370 million on non-refundable flights to Rwanda. But I am still yet to have my stag do so let’s see what the future holds.

It’s been a bad week for the Tories, that they’ll be keen to bury with a manifesto if they can. The candidate selection for Basildon & Billericay would be undemocratic enough to make Nigel Farage, the owner of Reform UK Ltd, blush. After saying earlier in the year that he was “extremely loyal to the North East”, Richard Holden made the shortlist for a constituency 300 miles away, he was also the only person on the shortlist, he’s also the Chairman of the Conservative Party. You’ve got to applaud the moxie but that’s gonna be a hell of a commute from Tyneside. Another Conservative candidate in Surrey Heath was delighted to announce that he was going to be a resident in the constituency by posing for a lovely picture with the keys to his new house. The house was discovered to be available on Airbnb from two days after the election, which is probably for the best as, now that his lie has leaked, his chances of winning aren’t looking great and you wouldn’t want to be stuck with a mortgage in a place where you just lost an election, especially considering the housing market these days.

The biggest Tory embarrassment has come from the leader himself, as is the custom. Rishi Sunak has been dragged over the coals by the press after he left early on the day of the D-Day ‘celebrations’ (which is a weird term for the anniversary of 10,000 boys dying, but it seems to be the one that’s stuck). He has apologised profusely, however that has done little to stop right-wing politicians from accusing him of not understanding culture. A bacon sandwich ought to sort that out, and I daresay that now would be a good time to break edge and have a nice British ale on Thursday morning, there’s nothing more British culture than that. PINTWATCH is looking rather static this week, politicians seem to be focussing more on launching policies than on going to pubs.

Reform have had some trouble of their own as, in what must be record time, one of their candidate’s old comments on the internet came out mere days after they had been selected. Their comments suggested women be deprived of healthcare, and that they were a liability in the military. The comment you might have seen the headline of is that “Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality.” Now who’s running away from D-Day?

The Greens also launched their manifesto today, haven’t had a lot of time to pore over it and I’ve got a deadline to hit so I’ll just say the Greens would make moves towards a four day week standard, the Tories’ manifesto interestingly said they would ban it in local councils. This is despite >60% of Conservatives saying they would like the policy, let alone all the evidence of improved efficiency and productivity. The Greens are about the only party listening to the facts, especially now that childbirth policy has been swept to the side. And Carla Denyer as Prime Minister would continue the trend of female PMs having shorter and shorter hair.

Lastly, I haven’t mentioned Labour this week, so here’s me mentioning Labour. Still more balanced election coverage than you’ll find anywhere else.

Thanks for reading! UK Election Unchained will be back next week.

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All links: linktr.ee/callumrg21

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