London, November 25: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched the Conservative Party Manifesto for the December 12 General Election with a central pledge to ‘get Brexit done’ and make the UK ‘Corbyn-neutral’ by Christmas. The 59-page manifesto comes 18 days before the general election.
The mission statement of the manifesto says, “We will invest £100bn in additional infrastructure spending on roads, rail and other responsible, productive investment which will repair and refurbish the fabric of our country and generate greater growth.” The PM promised not to raise the rates of VAT, income tax and National Insurance, dubbed a triple tax lock.
Johnson said unlike any other party standing in this election they are going to get Brexit done. The manifesto also promises there will be no political alignment with the European Union after the withdrawal and that Britain will have full control of its fishing waters.
Measures unveiled in the manifesto include 50,000 more nurses to plug the vacancy gap, more money for childcare support, energy efficiency measures, skills retraining and road upgrades. Hospital car parking charges in England would be axed for certain patients and National Health Service staff.
Johnson is also committed to increasing the NHS budget by £33.9 billion (US$43.5 billion) by 2023-24, and has promised a programme of building or upgrading 60 hospitals over the next decade. He also pledged to make the streets safer by recruiting 20,000 police officers.
On education, the prime minister announced a three-year plan to increase state-school spending in England by £7.1 billion by 2022-23. On the environment, Johnson promised to get Britain to net zero carbon emissions within 30 years. “Let’s go carbon-neutral by 2050 and Corbyn-neutral by Christmas!” he quipped.
On immigration, he wants to end freedom of movement for EU citizens and introduce an Australian-style points-based system. The scale of eastern European immigration since 2004 was one of the key drivers of the ‘leavel’ vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Corbyn said Johnson had unveiled a manifesto for billionaires and was offering only more cuts, more failure, and years more of Brexit uncertainty.