As I am not following the coverage of the election campaign I have no idea how well received the Conservative Party manifesto has been, or if any bits of it have blown up and threatened to sink their whole campaign. There is often some detail that derails a campaign's plans. But I haven't read the details yet, and judging by the overall effect I doubt I will find anything.
This document is much shorter than Labour's. It has half the page count and a lot more pictures. This is probably a good thing from the point of view of selling the Tory message. There are lots of pictures of people and especially of candidates - selected no doubt with an eye to showing the party's diversity. Lots of women, lots of occupational shots, plenty of melanin.
Interestingly not that much of Mr Johnson himself, and only Priti Patel and Dominic Raab of the other well known Tories are also pictured. I imagine that the Rees-Mogg crowd didn't hit the spot with the focus groups.
People buy from people so well framed faces work better than wonkery. This looks a lot like a sales pitch rather than a political programme. Few people actually read the manifesto. Nonetheless that is what I plan to do next. I think the content matters and although the chances of the Conservatives winning me over at this stage aren't good they are still not quite at zero. Maybe, just maybe, there will be something in these pages that I find compelling enough to overcome the visceral dislike I currently feel for the people who brought us Brexit. I'll report back with my findings.
https://vote.conservatives.com/our-plan
A Dutch writer once commented on the Kennedy-Nixon TV debate. He noted that it was a mistake, radio would have been better. For the public doesn’t care what they promise, they already know both are lying. But - he stated - whereas if you looked at Kennedy ( his eyes are rather close together) you’d probably lend him a fiver although you may worry if you’d get your fiver back . Whereas Nixon looked like a boxer disappointed in his career and you’d never lend him a fiver to start off with. So - would you lend any of the candidates a fiver?
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