The Tories are full of ideas at the moment. They’ve announced three major new policies in the past week. It feels like someone asked Rishi Sunak, “What would you do if you were prime minister?”, and he got really into answering. Then he must have remembered that, weirdly, he is prime minister. And the accurate answer would be: “Not much other than pander to the right-wing of my party by attempting to deport refugees to Rwanda and wait for an economic miracle while being relentlessly photographed in a hard hat.”
But what a productive burst of enthusiasm! Suddenly the Conservatives are announcing plans to bring back national service for 18-year-olds, introduce a “triple lock plus” to protect pensioners from income tax and abolish more than 100,000 university places. Is all this an attempt to stick it to the young for being overwhelmingly likely to vote Labour (if they vote at all)? Was it a response to Keir Starmer’s proposed extension of the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, which would certainly enhance the leftwing vote?
