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The Reform manifesto, or “contract” as they’re calling it, is a strange document.
Most manifestos are produced to give the voter a sniff of what life might look like if the party in question gets into power.
Election latest: Farage makes candid admission about Reform’s election goal
Yet Reform have said quite plainly that they have no ambition to win this election, and see their best case scenario as, instead, installing some MPs as the beginnings of the real opposition against the Labour Party they assume will win on 4 July.
Yet, even so, they have provided a manifesto (if it’s alright with you I might just carry on calling it that) with a blizzard of numbers illustrating what they would do in power if given the chance. Not only that, they put great store on the fact that this manifesto is a serious document – that their plans are “fully funded”.
So: are they? Do their numbers add up?
Well, in one sense, yes. But in another sense, very much: no.
We’ll get to the latter thing in a second but let’s just deal with the big numbers which do, as Reform say, make their plan look like it’s affordable.
The big numbers first. Essentially Reform say they have a range of money-raising measures (some tax rises and even more spending cuts) which add up to £150bn.
This is a lot of money, but then so is the amount they plan to give away, mostly in the form of tax cuts: £141bn.
So, on the surface, it looks like they plan to raise more money than they’ll spend. Not only is their plan “fully-funded”, it actually leaves a safety…
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