Classical Liberal manifesto at a glance

The Guardian’s guide to the key points of the Classical Liberal manifesto.

Twistednuke previously served as deputy prime minister and is now hoping to return their Classical Liberal party to government

The Classical Liberals have published their manifesto ahead of this week’s general election. The Classical Liberals are a socially and economically liberal party led by Twistednuke, who previously served as deputy prime minister and foreign secretary. Here is the Guardian’s guide to the key points of the Classical Liberal election manifesto.

The economy

• Continue to deliver unilateral free trade with low tariffs on goods coming into the UK.

• Join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) free trade deal.

• Join the European Free Trade Association, but without joining the single market, and ensure that parliament must vote on the tigerring of such an agreement.

• Look to liberalise the global economy, including seeking European access to financial services and striking financial regulatory agreement with Hong Kong, Switzerland and Singapore.

• Merge income tax and national insurance into a single tax payment, though without clarification as to what how much the new tax bills will be.

• Scrap VAT on all clothing, publications and books, maternity products, and female sanitary products.

• Any purchases made by a registered charity will be eligible for a full VAT rebate at the end of each financial year.

• Scrap land value tax at the Westminster level and devolve it to local authorities to set the rate and to fund local services, as was the case on the old council tax. Land value tax was introduced by the government’s “Opportunity Budget” as a tax on the unimproved value of land, rather than the value of homes under council tax, but at a national rate of 82% and, unlike council tax, controlled and raised by the government, rather than councils who now receive a fixed amount from Westminster instead of raising revenue locally.

• Reintroduce corporation tax at previous levels, scrapping the new distributed profits tax to close inevitable loopholes, but make economic reinvestment of profits tax deductible.

• Merge digital policy, currently under the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with the business department to create a Department for Digital Innovation, Business and Skills.

• The maximum tenure for patents on products will be reduced to 10 years and introduce a new sliding system where by the patents office can determine the length of a patent based on innovation and costs.

Immigration

• Maintain free movement of people between the UK and the 27 remaining EU nations.

• All allied countries with an economy exceeding an average of ¾ of the UK’s GNI should have free movement with Britain under a new GNI backed movement system, while other allied countries should have arrangements for visa free travel for holidaymakers.

• Roll the five tier visa system into three working visas and one visiting visa, with a high skill visa, a low skill visa, and a study visa for those studying at a UK university. A person on a study visa who graduates will automatically receive a high skill working visa. The new visit visa will last for up to 90 days which can be extended if provide is provided that a person can financially support themselves.

• Require that the fees charged on visas are no more than the total administrative costs to provide the visa.

• People will be allowed to legally travel through the United Kingdom without a visa.

• Create a settled status program for EU migrants with a cut off point at the conclusion of the two year implementation period. Under this scheme, any person who can prove they resided in the UK prior to the program’s commencement will retain the same rights that they previously enjoyed. All of those settled under this program will be given equal rights to British nationals.

• All first citizenship applications will be fee-free with later applications costing an amount equal to the total administrative cost.

• If a person is born in the United Kingdom, even if their parents are not British citizens, they will automatically be entitled to British citizenship in the same way as children born to British children, including those who are the children of undocumented migrants.

• Scrap the citizenship test.

• Every person who has worked with or for the armed services, such as interpreters, will be automatically entitled to British citizenship.

Brexit

• No Brexit deal can be taken off the shelf, and thus should be assembled taking the best of the Canada-EU trade agreement CETA and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area deal between the EU and three eastern European countries.

• The final future relationship deal should eliminate as many tariffs as possible.

• Maintain the government’s proposed solution to the Irish border issue, the island of Ireland protocol.

Put any deal with the EU to a meaningful House of Commons vote.

• If no majority can be found for a Classical Liberal deal then there will be a series of indicative votes in various models, including Classical Liberal proposals. (Meta: that went so well in real life…)

Conduct regular press briefings and parliamentary sessions on the progress of Brexit talks.

Foreign affairs

• Do not negotiate wide-ranging trade deals with China without guarantees on human rights.

• On the basis of breaches of the terms of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China, the Classical Liberals will offer the people of Hong Kong unconditional citizenship rights.

• Lobby NATO allies to expedite Ukranian accession to alliance and oppose any attempts to re-admit Russian to NATO until they end support for the Syrian regime and return Crimea to Ukraine.

• Continue British participation in airstrikes against Daesh (or ISIS, as they’re more popularly known.)

• Maintain Britain’s trident nuclear deterrent and the continuous at sea deterrent.

• Support a multilateral, global nuclear disarmament program agreed by nuclear armed states.

• Facilitate talks between Russia and the US to replace the now defunct INF treaty on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

• Maintain the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence and the target of spending 20% of defence funding on development and procurement.

• Recruit 2,000 more military personnel per year upto 2025.

• Ensure that military officer wages rise with inflation.

• Enshrine new international principles on cyber warfare and come to an international agreement on the limits and rules of what can be used for such warfare, with the aim of a treaty.

• Introduce legislation to ensure that companies able to control their security investment.

Education

• Uphold the pupil premium.

• Create a new fund for schools to hire one to one tutors for struggling kids, and provide funding for every child in struggling schools to receive one to one tutoring.

• Ban selective schools, such as grammar schools, from receive government funding and maintain the ban on catchment areas.

• Create a legal right for all children to choose whether to take foundation of higher GCSEs, rather than have the schools choose for them.

• Sponsor a summer reading challenge type program for STEM subjects to ensure learning is carried on over the summer.

• Require annual tests in secondary schools on English, Maths and Science.

• Ofsted will be required to set and publish targets for all schools, including private and religious schools, based primarily, but not entirely, on annual tests. Schools which miss their targets for two years in a row will be required to publish an improvement plan, and all children in the school will become entitled for the universal one to one tutoring program. Schools which miss their targets for our years will see Ofsted take a role in running the school. If this does not improve the situation and the school is still missing its targets for six years in a row, the school will be restructured, which might include more or less local authority control, academisation, control by a neighbouring school, or, in extreme circumstances, closure.

• Repeal the graduate tax, set to come into force from 2021 apply to all past students, and legislate for free university tuition – paid for upfront by the government – and generous interest free maintenance loans, held by the government not a loan company.

• Prevent discrimination on the basis of Equality Act protected characteristics of family backfround by universities and anonymise UCAS applications.

• Maintain the EU’s student exchange programme, Erasmus.

Democracy and politics

• Restore the voting age to 16, from the 18 it has been set at by the current government, repealing the Representation of the People Act, and reinstate the legislation which required that by-elections use the Single Transferable Vote electoral system.

• Add mandatory civics education to the national curriculum to ensure that young people are prepared to take part in the political process.

• Reinstate restrictions on protest policing repealed by the government.

Equal opportunities

• Make all future hiring in Westminster blind, removing details such as gender and race from the application process to tackle descrimination in politics.

• Ban women only shortlists for choosing election candidates.

• Equalise the law around maternity and paternity leave, including the length of leave available.

• Create a right for every person to be able to change their legal gender in law as easily as their legal name, and recognise genders other than male and female.

• Remove gender from all future passport designs.

Healthcare

• Invest into the NHS the amount recommended by the independent King’s Fund and ensure that the NHS’ budget rises every year.

• Streamline the construction and establishment of medical schools, universities and training facilities.

• Explore how a bursary or other investment scheme may increase the number of medical students and NHS staff.

• Ensure that the NHS is fully staffed with an open immigration policy.

• Protect free at the point of use healthcare and repeal the new prescription charges.

• Reintroduce the Healthcare Subsidy bill which will provide subsidies for private healthcare so that more people can afford it and take the strain off the NHS.

Environment and energy

• Merge existing climate change based taxes, such as the climate change levy and fuel duty, into the carbon tax and increase it every year so that is hits £77 per tonne by 2030.

• Cut other business taxes to ensure the carbon tax acts as a genuine incentive to become more environmentally friendly.

• Introduce a system where fishing licenses allow fishermen to fish an unlimited quantity, but instead control the number of licenses. 75% of initial licenses will be offered to small fishing companies and fishermen, rather than big companies and mega trawlers.

• Reform the electricity grid to change the role of private companies. The National Grid will be take charge of selling electricity directly to consumers, rather than the current energy suppliers who will be encouraged to generate electricity and sell it to the National Grid at market prices – rather than the other way round – ensuring that electricity is not sold for huge profits.

Transport

• The Classical Liberals support the construction of HS2, but want to see it connect to Manchester, Leeds, Preston, Lancaster, Glasgow, York, Newcastle, and Edinburgh.

• The party will only support railway privatisation if there is a convincing model which will improve consumer standards and is wary of franchising. The party does, however, support an Open Access Operator model of privatisation, with the government keeping a share in sectoral companies to ensure public-private cooperation.

• Focus on making public transport more appealing by making it cheaper, easier and more efficient, rather than try to disincentivise the car.

• Expand the Manchester metrolink to connect Wythenshawe, Trafford, Bolton and Wigan to the rest of Greater Manchester.

• Build a tram network in Leeds.

• Fund a replacement of the metrocar fleet on the Tyne and Wear metro.

• Create an Urban Tramways Fund, in partnership with private companies, to bring credible plans for tramlines in towns and cities that do not currently have them to fruition.

• Work with private operators and councils to upgrade and modernise buses.

• Create a Dutch style cycle schemes fund to expand cycling infrastructure across the country.

• Provide an undisclosed increase in funding to the Canals and Rivers Trust to restore, repair and expand the canal network.

Justice, constitution, and the police

• The Classical Liberals will oppose, and, if in government, block, the recommendations of the royal commission on devolution if the party feels a bad settlement has been proposed.

• Recruit more police constables, with no potential number suggested.

• Increase the police budget every year but take the allocation of police money out of politics, giving it to an independent body accountable to parliament who will be required to report each year on budget allocation. This will be alongside police and crime panels in every local authority area to ensure that police budgets are being used effectively.

• Introduce more unspecified safeguards on the exercise of police powers.

• Amend the closed material procedure to make the court process fairer for defendants.

• Update animal cruelty laws to end the legal treatment of animals as property.

Analysis: a detailed pitch for the liberal centre

The Classical Liberals may have played a strategic blinder with this visually beautiful manifesto. Although they refer to themselves when talking about deregulation of gender identity as “We on the right,” this actually seems like an inaccurate portrayal of their own position. This is not a particularly or overtly right-wing manifesto, in fact it comes across as centrist and reasonable almost throughout. The most right-wing policies contained within may be on plans to introduce subsidies for private healthcare to relieve the burden on the NHS and warm words on railway privatisation. Besides that, this is a manifesto that is making a pitch for the liberal centre, and even, at times, somewhat left leaning, particularly on defunding selective schools and the radical proposed reforms to the National Grid.

And that’s an extremely good strategy. The Liberal Democrats’ recent slide in support has coincided almost exactly with an increase for the Classical Liberals, who, if recent polling is right, stand poised to be the third party in the new parliament. Clearly, then, there are a lot of liberal, centrist and centre-left voters who are disillusioned with a lacklustre and tired Liberal Democratic party, and it is eminently sensible for the Classical Liberals to put out a manifesto which can win over many of those traditionally socially liberal voters with social democratic tendencies.

By parking themselves in the political centre ground, with policies that might have previously been more at home in a Liberal Democrat manifesto, such as a fund for one to one tutoring for school kids and the reintroduction of corporation tax, paired with traditional Classical Liberal ideas on immigration, the party has set themselves up as a strong alternative to the Liberal Democrats full of energy, ideas, and clear, detailed vision. It would have been easy, while gunning for those left-leaning former Liberal Democrats, to produce an inconsistent, vague, and messy vision for the country, but that trap is avoided. Popular and centre-grounded economic ideas are paired with traditional Classical Liberals on immigration, with a detailed and workable plan for sustainable free movement with economically similar countries and an overhauled visa system, and other issues.

Even beyond the electoral strategy of appealing to former Liberal Democrats, thought has clearly been given to how the Classical Liberals are planning to deliver their policies in government and the fact that they’re in an unofficial alliance with Labour, the Social Democratic party, and the Liberal Democrats, who they would likely be in government with, and they’ve tailored their policies accordingly. A lot of it will be generally acceptable to large parts of that coalition, particularly on education. Similarly, by being broadly centrist on the economy, with no mention of big tax cuts, except to ensure the carbon tax is a genuine incentive, or deregulation, but instead a focus on fairness – with the combination of income tax and national insurance, the zero rating of VAT on more goods, and rebates for charity purchases, and the return of corporation tax – they have made it far more likely that a large number of their policies will be implemented. But, despite that, they have remained true enough to themselves to not alienate existing supporters.

Besides being strategically pitch perfect, the Classical Liberals have also produced one of this election’s most detailed and comprehensive policy plans without splurging on too many policies – as was one of Labour’s errors – focusing on ensuring every proposal is eloquently and fully explained and packed with clear details. It is deceptively packed, with its 20 pages suggesting a short read, with lots of deep ideas effectively, and concisely, contained. There is very little doubt as to how the Classical Liberals will aim to implement their plan, as there is with some other parties, and little doubt as to what a Classical Liberal Britain might look like. A particular highlight in this regard is on the new targets for struggling schools, creating a new, better way for schools to improve, with tangible targets, rather than Ofsted simply pointing out what has gone wrong, and a clear pathway for schools that fail over an extended period. That does not mean that there aren’t some vague policies, empty rhetoric, or increases and cuts without numbers, but it is, on the whole, an enlightening read.

That being said, as pointed out in Saltcon’s hilarious coverage of the manifesto which you can read here, the document often gets lost in its detail and becomes jargonistic and technical, and while I have sung the praise of the immigration section this is also one of the main offenders in this regard, as are the economy and Brexit sections. While this means that the party has crafted, not just an election platform, but, a plan on exactly how they would govern, it also means it lacks the popular, common touch that would speak to ordinary people who maybe have no interest in or knowledge of “financial regulatory” agreements with Hong Kong, Switzerland and Singapore.

That, for me, is yet further proof that this is a document which is targeted specifically at the sort of centrist, liberal voters who may actually have experience in and curiosity for these issues, so while it loses some broader appeal, it again smacks of a strategically tailored effort to talk to those voters who may be moving away from the Liberal Democrats and looking for a new political home. And for those who care about liberal politics and detail, this manifesto will, in my view, successfully win them round because of the positive light in which it shines when compared to far inferior Liberal Democrat effort.

Whereas this manifesto is often too heavy on detail, however complex, niche, and technical, the Liberal Democrat manifesto is, clearly, the exact opposite. It is vague, fluffy, and light on traditional liberalism, instead emphasising that the party is now a futurist party. It does not even mention Brexit – which was a core Liberal Democrat value in recent years. The Classical Liberal manifesto is, however, unabashedly liberal, clear on policy plans, and specific on how traditional values will be converted into workable policy.

Overall, this is a less manifesto driven by ideology and a desire to enact idealist policies – though traditional liberalism is still at the core of this manifesto, particularly on social issues, reflecting the fact that all members of this potential Sunrise+ government are socially liberal and pro-immigration – and more on adapting to the circumstances in order to substantially deliver. While that may come as something as disappointed to the right flank of Twistednuke’s party, their moving the party’s position on the political spectrum provides greater guarantees of enacting their proposals – a consideration not taken by Labour. But this is more than made up for by ensuring that what is there is compelling and well explained, and innately liberal, and may well do the party many favours on Friday.