Nothing is what it seems in the Tory manifesto, let alone how the shameless Tory press presents it. What little there is in its few pages falls apart on cursory scrutiny. This is a Potemkin manifesto, all cardboard front, nothing behind. Note how its briefers crafted two contrary messages: fiscal prudence for the upmarkets and magnificent largesse for the downmarket papers.

The IFS has it right: as a blueprint for five years, 'the lack of significant policy action is remarkable'

“End to austerity,” trumpets the Sun, heralding “a jumbo manifesto package of spending promises”. The Institute for Fiscal Studies finds just £2.9bn of new spending on public services; a minnow not a jumbo, as the Sun takes its readers for fools. Outside the NHS and schools, spending remains a colossal 15% lower than it was in 2010. Schools’ uplift is still less per pupil than was spent in 2010. The NHS’s increase after years of unprecedented starvation is still less than its historic average. This is not an end to penury in most services – the shut magistrates courts, abolished legal aid, probation mayhem, lost Sure Start centres, or local authorities teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The national insurance saving of £85 a year is an insult to those who have lost £12bn in benefits. A rise of 1.1% in spending as a proportion of GDP sounds big only because it rises from such a low.

The Daily Express headlines “Boris pledges 50,000 extra nurses”, though the Express knows as well as the Guardian that the claim fell apart as a bare-faced cheat on Sunday. Of those, 18,500 were spuriously added as to be “retained”. How? With more than 4 million waiting for operations and A&E queues longer than ever, NHS work grows more stressful.

Recently I sat with a chief executive, hearing from a senior nurse in his chemotherapy ward as she gave in her notice. She couldn’t take it any longer, after multiple calls at night at home from her understaffed ward with no one senior enough to deputise. She was exhausted. He begged her to stay, offered her all kinds of things, but she was burnt out and it was too hard on her young children; she was near tears as she still loved the job. A service so short of staff risks this downward spiral.

Boris Johnson will not “retain” them but he brazens it out, repeating the same untruths in every speech – the bogus 40 new hospitals or the 5m extra GP appointments. The £250m for school holiday care emerges as just £1 per primary-age child per week.

His social care ruse is a sham “cast-iron guarantee” that “no social care user would have to sell their home”. But how? His £1bn is the barest emergency handout for a collapsing service. Claiming he wants “a cross-party consensus”, he must hope memories are short.

Before the 2010 election, the Lib Dem Norman Lamb brought together a cross-party group with the Tory Andrew Lansley and Labour’s health secretary, Andy Burnham, to agree how to pay for care. The cost should fall on older people who have assets, not young families who don’t own homes. They agreed on broad principles. Burnham devised a good plan for those with assets to pay a lump sum into a fund on retirement, with all care free thereafter. But pre-election, David Cameron ordered his team out and launched a “death tax” attack to kill Burnham’s plan. No wonder Labour retaliated in 2017 against Theresa May’s plan, destroying it as a “dementia tax”. Calling for “cross-party consensus” on a dynamite topic is just a way to dodge responsibility. If Johnson gets a majority, it’s for him to take unpopular decisions.

But of all these fictions, the great woolly mammoth of untruth is that Johnson will “get Brexit done”. Here’s Monday’s Daily Express: “Britain can roar ahead like a lion released from a cage.” Brexit so far has done nothing but harm: the UK has plunged to the bottom of the G7 for growth, sterling has been devalued by 10% against the euro, companies have fled, research projects have been lost, and brains drained – and we haven’t left yet. Johnson promises a “fantastic” trade deal in a year: yes, a fantasy. The Financial Times says the idea that he would be “liberated to tackle social issues festering since 2016 is palpably false”.

Worse than that, he has no plans to liberate. Or none that dare speak their name in public. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has it right: as a blueprint for five years, “the lack of significant policy action is remarkable”. No vision, and no burning wish to repair anything, nor to fire anything up. That void will be filled by the Brexit wishlist, to slash regulation and abolish workers’ rights, with that ominous manifesto threat to “update the Human Rights Act” and judicial review to “ensure there is a proper balance”. That means exit from the European convention on human rights, and exit from civilisation. The BBC expects no mercy, nor will his NHS “not for sale” pledge survive first contact with a Trump trade negotiation.

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Nothing here suggests more than token interest in confronting the UK’s problems, worsened in a decade of neglect. Brexit will consume all money and capacity, ignoring crippling inequality, gaping generational wealth divide and national educational failure. Above all, Johnson parks climate catastrophe until 2050, when it will be someone else’s crisis.

Labour’s ambition is colossal by comparison. Too much, some say, but that’s far better than none. Besides, its gargantuan menu of a manifesto will be picked from a la carte, since other pollsters agree with John Curtice that Corbyn has zero chance of winning a majority. But there is every chance he can deny Johnson a majority: if the Tory lead can be cut from its average 12% to 6% or 7%, then Johnson loses. Instead we get a progressive alliance, which would choose its priorities together.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist