Emily Cole
Naked Politics Blogger
Politics is more confusing than ever and it can be pretty hard to know what each political party is offering- especially as a young person. We know you don’t have time in between working or studying for exams, to be reading through shit tonnes of pages.
But as a young person, your opinion matters- massively. So to give you a hand, here’s Naked Politics’ election breakdown. We’ve broken down the Brexit Party’s manifesto in terms of how positive we think they would be for young people.
No points for guessing what these guys stand for- they are all about Brexit. Instead of a manifesto they have a “Contract with the people” because according to them manifestos are apparently just vague promises that parties have no intention of implementing (someone should probably tell them breach of contract is also a thing).
Overall, it’s a pretty short, minimal “contract”. Here are the main points.
Brexit
- Criticism of Boris Johnson’ Brexit deal is not to be found in the ‘contract’ in the wake of their decision not to stand in seats the Tories won in 2017. Instead, focus is on a Clean-Break Brexit at the end of the transition period with the party ruling out an extension.
- The transition period is currently planned to last until the end of 2020, but this comes from when we were meant to leave the EU of the 29th of March 2019. During the transition period, the UK would still abide by the EU’s rules while the two sides agree a new deal for the future relationship and a trade deal.
- If there is no extension to the transition period, MPs will have to pass a new withdrawal agreement by the end of 2020 or risk a no deal scenario. It’s thought it will be tricky to get a new trade deal and future relationship negotiated in this time.
- They reckon there will be a ‘Brexit bonus’ that would mean we kept our £13bn annual contribution but conveniently ignores the funding we get in return for that.
- They want to reduce annual immigration- but haven’t committed to a specific target.
Our democracy
- Reform of the UK Supreme Court. Judges would be subject to confirmation hearings from Parliamentary Committees as they are in the US and we’ve all seen the problems that arise from partisan judicial appointments (see Brett Kavanaugh).
- Reform the voting system to make it more representative.
- Abolish the unelected House of Lords.
- A Citizens’ Initiative which would allow the public to call a referendum on an issue, subject to a 5 million threshold of registered voters.
Tax and spending
- Scrapping the BBC license fee (with no offer of how to replace its funding).
- Scrapping plans for the railway HS2.
- Investing £2.5bn in fishing and coastal communities – areas which heavily voted to leave the EU.
- Abolishing inheritance tax.
- Invest in the Environment: in addition to planting millions of trees to capture CO2 they will promote a global initiative at the UN.
Housing
- No commitment to new government housing, but they want to “simplify the planning and development processes to encourage small and medium sized developers, accelerating the pace of development to increase housing supply.”
Crime and policing
- Increase police numbers, with more visible policing, ensure focus on combating violent crime, robbery and burglary; although there’s no explicit commitment for higher spending.
- They would also introduce sentence ‘ranges’ for young offenders, to encourage rehabilitation- but it’s not explained how this would work.
Education
- There’s some good news on student loans; they’d abolish student loan interest.
- They also want to lower taxes for employers to take on “genuine apprentices”. However it’s not clear what this means, or how lower taxes would mean the extra money kept by employers would definitely create more apprenticeship schemes.
If you’d like to find out more about who Naked Politics is officially recommending young people vote for, check out our main Manifesto Breakdown.Check out our more detailed breakdowns on our homepage!