The Tories’ manifesto was unveiled today. You can read it here.
For goodness sake don’t go for the high resolution one as it
will probably crash your browser. At a whopping 77 megabytes /
130 pages, I refuse to believe that anyone, not even its author,
has read it all the way through. But you don’t need to, because,
unlike Labour, the Tories have a narrative. Like all good
narratives it serves as a shorthand for everything they plan to
do. So rather than go through all those pages looking for
problems, I’m focussing on the narrative and it’s problems
instead.  How easy their narrative is to define (and remember,
as I’ve just watched the launch) is indicative of its quality,
authenticity and mental stickiness, which is what it needs to
succeed. In essence they’re arguing that government is a part
of, not apart from, society. “We are society”, said David. This
is the Big Society (big) idea. It sounds like Blair’s Big Tent
idea but it is different because it involves activity, not just
listening. At its heart li