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  • It's just over two weeks now till Britain

  • votes in its general election.

  • And with the launch on Sunday of the Conservative party

  • manifesto we've now seen all the main offerings

  • from the major parties.

  • Boris, Boris.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Anyone who's ever seen their football team defend

  • a 1-0 lead with 15 minutes to go will

  • understand how it felt watching the Conservative party launch.

  • The Tories are playing very much a safety first campaign now.

  • They've got their one radical policy,

  • which is Brexit and pushing it through as fast as possible.

  • And everything else now is about denying the opposition

  • other reasons to attack them.

  • Boris Johnson is going to spend the rest of this election

  • repeating his slogans, get Brexit done,

  • invest in schools, hospitals, and the police.

  • And the more he can avoid deviating from that,

  • the happier he's going to be.

  • Here is the route map to take us forward.

  • Because unlike any other parties standing at this election,

  • we're going to get Brexit done.

  • There was surprisingly little in his manifesto which

  • was in any way unexpected.

  • All of the big policy decisions or all the difficult policy

  • decisions have been pushed to one side.

  • Social care reform, the issue which

  • derailed Theresa May in 2017, they're

  • not even going to offer you a proposal for that.

  • They're just going to say they're going to look at it

  • once again while putting a £5bn sticking plaster over

  • the issue.

  • As far as Boris Johnson is concerned every day

  • that nothing happens in this election

  • is a day in which he has won because he's

  • sitting on a 12-20 point lead.

  • And he knows that Labour has to work to catch him.

  • His only job now is not to gift them opportunities.

  • This is our manifesto: to give decency in our society,

  • to give hope to people, to right the wrongs that have happened

  • over 10 years of austerity.

  • The other thing that's really been exposed by all

  • of the manifesto launches is just the scale

  • of the difference between the Conservatives and Labour when

  • it comes to public spending.

  • One estimate says that for every pound the Conservatives are

  • offering to spend and put into public services,

  • Labour is offering to spend £28.

  • That's an enormous gulf.

  • No one can recall anything like that in recent memory.

  • Often when an opposition party is running for government,

  • it tries to show how sensible and moderate its proposals are.

  • Labour has gone quite the other way.

  • It is proposing the most radical transformation

  • of the British economy since 1945.

  • And it believes in re-engineering

  • that whole economy away from what we understand

  • a market economy to be.

  • Many of the taxes it's proposing are huge hits

  • to business, to the wealthy, and to investment.

  • And the consequence of this will be to push off wealth creators

  • from this country.

  • So there is a major risk in what Labour's doing.

  • And far from worrying about that risk,

  • Labour's actually embracing it.

  • Jeremy Corbyn singled out billionaires,

  • landlords, employers.

  • All of these people are potentially

  • the enemy in his socialist vision for Britain.

  • I accept the opposition of the billionaires,

  • because we will make those at the top

  • pay their fair share of tax.

  • And he is happy to embrace that as he

  • tries to assemble a coalition of other interest groups

  • to sweep him into power.

  • He's targeting the young with policies like scrapping tuition

  • fees and his radical commitment to decarbonising

  • the British economy within 10 years.

  • He's targeting the lower paid and those

  • who are struggling in work with promises

  • to abolish zero-hours contracts and promises,

  • to change the world of work in other key ways,

  • and give employees more power over employers.

  • In other words, there is as sharp

  • a divide as you can possibly imagine in this election.

  • And for Labour, it's all or nothing.

  • It's a long way back.

  • It's got to start squeezing the Liberal Democrat vote if it's

  • to have any chance of catching the Conservatives,

  • denying Boris Johnson a victory.

  • And to do that, it's throwing everything at this.

  • There is no spending commitment Labour has not been prepared

  • to make.

  • It's throwing them out like confetti at a wedding.

  • By contrast, the Conservative policy

  • now looks rather sober, rather restrained, possibly

  • even rather complacent.

  • And that's the risk for them if they start seeing Labour

  • catching up on them in the last few days of the campaign.

  • But as things stand, with two weeks to go,

  • if we don't start seeing some major inroads

  • of the Conservative lead in the next few days,

  • there are going to be Labour party supporters who are

  • starting to panic.

It's just over two weeks now till Britain

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