BJ

There are several policies that they would have liked to have implemented in the first government but could not do so because of opposition from their Liberal Democrat coalition partners.

There is much talk about the massive austerity imposed by the outgoing coalition, but the cuts were nowhere as great as the Conservatives would have liked — although it did establish the debt narrative. Now, given the commitment to a balanced budget in five years’ time, many more cuts will have to be introduced, most probably in the early years of the new government so that the electoral cycle can be primed for a third Conservative victory at the next general election.

You may expect to see them try to emasculate the BBC as the one remaining major national institution that has a constitutional commitment to even-handedness in public debate. There will also be further attempts to restrict the freedom of teaching and learning of university scholars and students.

There will be further measures to privatize the National Health Service, particularly if they manage to introduce the TTIP and TiSA (the Trade in Services Agreement), which will open the doors for more American companies entering service markets. And there will be further moves to cut welfare expenditure on those in work even as the Conservatives protect pensions and pensioners — who are much more likely to vote and, more importantly, to vote Conservative.

So, if they want to save £26 billion as announced, they must attack the benefits for those in work. They will restrict the welfare benefits that a single family can receive to £23,000 instead of the current £26,000; they will continue to cap housing benefits, which will force welfare recipients to move from expensive areas in London to cheaper areas, and from London in general to other cities.

Indeed, some London local authorities are subsidizing moves elsewhere in order to reduce housing benefit payments and recover public housing for occupants who need smaller benefits or for privatization. This measure may help to resolve the housing crisis for aspirant middle classes, because more houses will become available. There are also vote-catching but economically irrational proposals to enable those who live in subsidized social housing to purchase their homes below the market price — without guarantees of replacing them.

More generally, but building on such initiatives, they will try to push, wherever possible, spending reductions into laws in order entrench them — the most obvious example is the proposed legislation to require governments to balance their budgets so that, at the next election, an opposition party that proposes to repeal a given law will be asked where it will find the money for this. Some acts of legislation are very much politically motivated in order to entrench conservative-neoliberal logic.