Less than 24 hours after whining that "Labour's sums don't add up" the Tories have released a total farce of a manifesto with no costings whatever.
The Tory manifesto is an absolute Swiss cheese of uncosted spending pledges, yet suddenly all of the "magic money tree" ranters who have been stinking out the political debate for weeks have gone into hiding.
There are more than 50 uncosted pledges in the Tory manifesto ranging from planting more trees to investment in infrastructure (see the table at the bottom of the article).
Not only is the Tory manifesto riddled with promises that make no effort to explain how they will be paid for, some of their pledges are completely incoherent too.
Consider the £8 billion for the NHS pledge, which doesn't even say whether it was a significant annual increase (£40 billion over the five year parliament) or just £1.6 billion a year, which is a tiny fraction of what is needed in order to reverse the damage of seven years of funding cuts at a time of increasing demand.
In the end the Tories said it was neither, but apparently it's a policy of spending £8 billion more in the last year than they're spending now. What happens in between is a black hole; whether that £8 billion is adjusted for inflation is a mystery; whether that money is just a recycling of George Osborne's £8 billion pledge from 2015 is a mystery; where the money is going to come from if it isn't just a re-pledging of old money is a mystery. It's a total bloody farce.
One of the most extraordinary things is that both Labour and the Lib-Dems managed to pull together costed manifestos at short notice, but the Tories, who must have been planning their snap election move for weeks before they actually announced it, have cobbled together such a farcical document.
So given that the Tories haven't explained where them money is going to come from for literally dozens of their policies, where have all these economically illiterate "magic money tree" ranters disappeared to today?
Surely they should be having the time of their life at the best opportunity to shout "magic money trees" they've ever been presented with.
But somehow no! They've all gone terribly quiet.
They blabbered on about "magic money trees" when Labour announced their fully-costed plan to provide free school meals to all primary school children. "Magic money trees" was their only answer to Labour's fully costed pledge to scrap NHS hospital parking fees. And when the fully-costed Labour manifesto was released they all drooled "magic money trees" again like a pack of Pavlov's dogs.
Yet when their beloved Tory party releases a manifesto so full of funding holes it would be laughable if it wasn't so bloody serious, they've all suddenly disappeared into hiding.
Perhaps they're all busy trying to rote learn the official Conservative Party HQ response to the observation that Tory Dementia Tax is a fucking abomination?
Who knows?
At least the hypocritical "magic money tree" fuckwits have shut up for a wee while though eh?
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