Not backtracking at all. I stand by what I said I stand by. You've for some reason decided to take a pretty relaxed view of a party manifesto whereas you want to pedantically quibble over every little thing I say. You have your gotcha that it is wrong to say literally they don't have a single policy, but I wasn't being literal. If you want to actually discuss the meaning of my post now, please do, because this is tiresome.
They literally have a 'policy' that they pretend will save 50 billion a year, which is 'save £5 in every £100'. This is a slogan. This is 'cutting government waste'. Considering pretty much every department is underfunded, the justice system overcrowded, NHS buildings and schools crumbling, councils going bankrupt, the national grid needs modernising, transport networks are creaking loudly. This, to be clear, is embarrassing. This is an embarrassing 'pledge'. My first question to Richard Tice in any interview would be how the hell do you think you can cut 5% of government spending "without touching front line services" considering the massive under investment these public services have had over a decade. We have a broken country and you think you can magically cut 5% of our budget.
How are they going to prevent more councils going bust? What is their policy on adult and social care? On child care? What will they do about energy security once they scrap all renewable subsidies overnight? What will they do about food prices once they mandate certain food chains need to artificially increase British bought products massively, overnight? How will this affect farmers supplying and consumers being able to afford this more expensive produce? They've said they want to build more reservoirs. Ok great. We haven't build any new ones in decades I believe. What are their policies on land usage and local opposition? How much will it cost? This goes under transport and utilities, why doesn't this section have any costs? It isn't even included in their made up numbers they stuck on half a page at the end. Do they think we can build giant infrastructure projects for free? What is their policy on devolution? How will they achieve growth when immigration is a major factor in propping it up? The population decline among the British born population will prove disastrous for our economy without immigration, how can they achieve the large tax cuts they want without it? How are they arriving at their figures that tax cuts will pay for themselves, why didn't that work for Liz Truss? How are they going to increase the numbers of prisoners with the unaccounted for money that they will pour into police and harsher sentences, when our prisons are already full? They say they will reform social housing so that foreign people go to the back of the line, but 90% of new lets go to UK nationals, the waiting list is because there is a shortage, did they not know this? What are their housing targets? What are their NHS waiting list targets? How are they going to limit immigration when every single government which has attempted it, to my knowledge, has failed? They have a policy which is "start to motivate 2 million people to go back to work" but there is little explanation as to what this means or how they will do it, what the challenges are? What are they going to do about transport, they just say they will accelerate current existing plans, but plenty of plans are shelved. The Leeds tram has technically been in planning for 20 years. What will they do about buses? Will they allow more local authorities to bring them under control? Will rail be nationalised? Under "ban critical race theory" they say no teacher should be allowed to teach a child to be ashamed of their country? What does this mean? What exactly will the law be here? If a teacher explains to a student, for example, about the Bengal famine, that student would likely be ashamed of our country for it, is that now illegal?
I could go on...