Tories unveil domestic policy pledges ahead of election
The Conservative Party has announced four domestic policies on low pay, prisons, police and education as it gears up for a general election next month.
The policy pledges included an independent review backing plans for an increase to the national living wage and investment at seven prisons to help reduce drug smuggling and the use of phones and weapons in prison.
Read more: Nigel Farage will not stand for a seat at general election
Other pledges were more funding for colleges to help increase access to subjects such as physics and engineering, and the launch of a consultation on police powers at unauthorised caravan sites, Sky News reported.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party is reportedly planning to publish figures that show cancellations of NHS operations due to staff shortages and failing equipment have risen a third in two years.
The announcements came ahead of the launch of official election campaigns this week, and as the Conservative Party debates how to work with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
Read more: Boris Johnson feels ‘deep regret’ for missing 31 October Brexit deadline
Former defence minister Tobias Ellwood has said the Conservative Party will not win the upcoming general election if it moves to the right in response to claims by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith that the “Tory Party is now the Brexit Party”.
Ellwood told the BBC: “We had a text exchange on that. I said we are the Conservative Party… The message we’ve got to get to the country is that we have that broad spectrum, that appeal right across the nation.
“If we start to concentrate ourselves to the right and haemorrhage good people, as we’ve seen the majority of people who’ve chosen to step back and not fight the next election come from the moderate wing of the party. We will not win the next election if we move to the right.”
Farage said yesterday that he would not stand in the election, choosing instead to campaign against Boris Johnson’s EU divorce deal.
Farage’s party plans to contest all 600 seats, in a move that could split the Leave vote.
Read more: Brexit Party to run in hundreds of seats
Conservative Eurosceptic backbencher, and chair of the European Research Group, Steve Baker yesterday told the Telegraph that Farage could be the “man who threw away Brexit” and could create a “weak and indecisive” hung Parliament.
The full list of Brexit Party candidates is expected to be published later today.
Main image credit: Getty