I write this on ‘Black Friday’. That day when retailers of all sorts, after raising prices three months ago, cut the price back to what it was and claim to have given us a ‘bargain’.

It strikes me that that is pretty much what the Conservatives have done. Having raised taxes by £90 billion they cut them by £20 billion and pretend that we have ‘got a bargain’. It’s nonsense of course. At the end of this Parliament the average household will be £1,900 worse off, even given the National Insurance reduction. And taxes will still be at their highest since the aftermath of WWII.

Despite claims that the £20 billion was in some way ‘spare’ it looks like it has been ‘borrowed’ (another word for ‘cut’) from future expenditure on public services. It will be funded, we are told, by ‘increases in efficiency’. 

Anyone feel that the ‘increases in efficiency’ caused by the last 13 years of Conservative austerity have left the NHS in a better, more efficient, state? With a record high of 7.8 million on waiting lists? Thought not.

For those of you still inclined to believe this moribund Government let me ask you this. Remember that promise to ‘take back control’ and ‘reduce immigration to the ten-of-thousands’ (and I make no endorsement of the laudability, desirability or achievability of that)? With immigration in 2022 hitting a record high, are you still happy to believe the Conservatives?

Mark Wooding

Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate Central Devon