But we are FREE! and sovereign again. Or at least will be, once we escape from the jackbooted shackles of membership of: The Council of Europe (nice flag, though!), the UN, NATO, the Commonwealth, ISO, CITES, WTO (oops, Donald has already killed that one), OECD (will probably drop out of that as income and GDP fall), IMF (might need that soon), OSCE, Interpol, G7, G20, ILO, IAEA, ICRC, WIPO, and of course FIFA, UEFA and the ICC. THEN we will be free.

This is true, and explains why it will be divisive. But it also contains the potential for continued Tory rule through re-invention, which has been one of the unique factors of this current administration: Theresa May was able to present herself as a break with the Cameron/Osborne era and Boris was able to present himself as a usurper breaking the 'establishment' of May/Hammond and so on.

If Boris goes down the road of trade liberalisation, Singapore-on-Thames approach, and it goes wrong, then as well as the critique from Labour there is the potential for right wing Brexiters to emerge in the Tory party with a Trumpian approach: we should have a trade strategy that puts Britain first, willing to use tariffs and subsidies.

If we go down the 'red Tory' approach, and it goes wrong, then the Singapore-on-Thamesers will reappear and say why on earth did we have a Tory government messing around with things like subsidising failing industries, using energy price caps, state run parts of the rail network and a minimum wage? We need to roll all that kind of nonsense away and have a deregulated, low tax Singapore on Thames.

Something had to be done about Northern given its performance, its location and all the seats the Tories won in the North - it will not be in public ownership for long and I don't see a full scale re-nationalisation ala Corbyn - do you?

Minimum wage has been going up annually since the Tories came into power in 2010 so Boris is not doing anything that previous regimes haven't been doing - its a big hike this time 6.5%!!

The Tories inherited a mess from the last Labour government and something needed to be done - we all knew the mess was so bad it would take many years of belt-tightening to put it right. Nobody - other than Hammond - liked austerity so as soon as it could loosened it has been. The investment seems to be going into existing public services e.g. NHS, Education and Police - I don't see a call from the Tories to re-nationalise utilities, trains, post etc - I don't loosening of trade union legislation, I don't see free broadband, free home insulations, closing of public schools and I haven't see an increase in top earners tax rates etc.

Maybe I have missed something?

You were doing fine up until that third paragraph and then out came the old nonsense about Labour.

I think you find that the problem in 2008 was called the global financial crisis not the Labour financial crisis. You'll also, with a bit research, find that Labours borrowing leading up to 2008 was not excessive and that the head of the Bank of England contirmed that Labour were not at fault.

I never said Labour caused the issues, what I said was the coalition inherited a mess?

Fair enough.

Sal Paradise wrote: Maybe I have missed something? Don’t think so. Here’s the key points from the manifesto. https://vote.conservatives.com/our-plan Get Brexit Done, obviously. Increased spending on some public services, while controlling debt (‘controlling’ in this context may or may not be defined in the main document, I cba to check) and not raising income tax, VAT or National Insurance. No rain on bank holidays. The point is, they haven’t said very much about how they want to go about ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’. Not only is there no real detail, there’s not even a broad vision that goes beyond ‘confidence’ and ‘rising to challenges’. Maybe we’ll identify synergies to achieve some efficiencies and create prosperity. tbf, i’m fine with a degree of pragmatism and i’m not demanding a Johnsonian ideology. I’m just curious as to 1. What they’re going to do and how, and 2. Whether they know themselves yet. What model do you think they should be looking at as the UK remodels itself?

Sal Paradise wrote: Maybe I have missed something? Don’t think so. Here’s the key points from the manifesto. https://vote.conservatives.com/our-plan Get Brexit Done, obviously. Increased spending on some public services, while controlling debt (‘controlling’ in this context may or may not be defined in the main document, I cba to check) and not raising income tax, VAT or National Insurance. No rain on bank holidays. The point is, they haven’t said very much about how they want to go about ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’. Not only is there no real detail, there’s not even a broad vision that goes beyond ‘confidence’ and ‘rising to challenges’. Maybe we’ll identify synergies to achieve some efficiencies and create prosperity. tbf, i’m fine with a degree of pragmatism and i’m not demanding a Johnsonian ideology. I’m just curious as to 1. What they’re going to do and how, and 2. Whether they know themselves yet. What model do you think they should be looking at as the UK remodels itself?

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Part 5 initiated.