The Queen's Speech For Young People
Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility, these are the principles which the new coalition will strive for, as revealed in the Queen’s Speech. How will these principles be applied to 16-25 year olds? I have highlighted three areas which were mentioned in the Speech because they have the most effect on us, the rising generation.
“The first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth.”
This is stated as the first priority and I wholly agree. Without a deficit reduction plan and with no economic growth, the prospects for young people will be exceptionally grim. However the spending cuts announced by the government are worrying for 16-25 year olds. Harriet Harman said in the debate that cutting 10,000 university places is not cutting waste, yet this make the competition for university places more competitive and inevitably will lead to more people missing out. The axing of the Future Jobs Fund is also worrying because it now makes it even harder to find a job. Graduates and those who are long-term unemployed will be squeezed even harder.
“The tax and benefits system will be made fairer and simpler.”
This will greatly benefit 16-25 year olds, especially when the tax income threshold will be raised, enabling them to take more money home. Making the tax system simpler will also benefit everyone; reducing the complicated tax thresholds make it easier to know how much tax you will have to pay. The long-term aim of the government is to increase the tax threshold to £10,000 a year, a substantial increase from the personal limit of £6,475.
“My Government will remove barriers to flexible working and promote equal pay.”
These are very good proposals. The promotion of equal pay will especially benefit females because their income will have parity with men; there should never have been a pay gap. Flexible working will be a huge benefit because the government acknowledges that this will allow families to spend more time together, allow a better work-life balance and increase staff morale.
(picture courtesy of UK Parliament @Flickr)
Winning twelve seats in the European Parliament at the 2009 elections, coming second only to the Conservatives in England, was a breakthrough for the party. Naturally, after that boost, UKIP wants to be taken seriously as an electoral force, and a viable alternative to the status quo on all political issues, not just through the anti-European Union stance for which the party is best known.
This aspiration is reasonable enough. Many parties have started out as pressure groups, standing in elections to make a point, to bring a particular issue into the political spotlight. The Green movement in Europe, the Northern League in Italy and the Bloc Québécois in Canada have all successfully morphed from single issue campaign groups into parties with a comprehensive manifesto and a desire not just to influence government, but to be part of it. UKIP has clearly decided these are the examples it must follow.
The problem is that once UKIP has made that choice and resolved to become a party campaigning on all issues, it has to see it through, and start taking itself seriously on that basis. The paperwork is there; the party’s manifesto contains pledges on seventeen different policy areas, from the NHS to pensions to transport. And whatever you think of the policies themselves (you can read a summary of the manifesto here - http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/1567-ukip-manifesto), most of the bases are covered.
But politicians and activists within UKIP just aren’t communicating this new identity effectively. In this election season, the party is coming across as a ranting, raving, aggressively anti-European group, still obsessed with a single issue. We’ve already seen Nigel Farage’s bizarre tirade against the European Council President, Herman van Rompuy, in February. However outraged he is that an unelected politician is so influential in Europe, Farage’s outburst seemed unprofessional, hysterical, and against the politeness which UKIP identifies as “part of Britishness” in its own publications (http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/Britishness.pdf).
Now Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who replaced Farage as leader of UKIP in December, has given on the BBC’s Campaign Show. Lord Pearson was completely unwilling to discuss much of his own party’s manifesto, such as their policy on crime, because he wanted to focus only on Europe, which is UKIP’s safer ground. When he was pressed on the manifesto, Lord Pearson implied that he hadn’t developed most of the policies himself, and though he did claim to have read the manifesto in full, his unwillingness to defend it made for a less than convincing party leader.
UKIP must stop playing games with the electorate. It is the party’s right to choose whether to be a protest group or an alternative government. But if they pretend to be something they’re not, UKIP politicians can expect voters to leave them out in the cold.
Write a comment
Posts: 1
Reply #1 on : Tue June 01, 2010, 11:03:29