Does UKIPs manifesto make any sense?

Question

UKIP's main policy is to pull out of the EU and supposedly save £6.4 billion pounds a year.


UKIP want to increase military spend by 40% "Spend an extra 40% on defence annually, another 1% of GDP". This would amount to £15.2 billion pounds a year.

In order to pay for this £9 billion increase UKIP want to reduce the amount people pay in tax, over 10% for anyone earning £150,000 a year (and rising higher the more you earn) while those earning a decent lower income would see a rise of only 3%, fair huh?

Does this make any sense to you?

Or is it just small party mentality where you can say anything you like to get support because you know you're not going to get into power to have to honour your manifesto in the first place?

Answer 1

No it doesn't. When UKIP talk about the cost of the EU it is always in billions, but the fact of the matter is that it is only 0.5% of GDP. Now I realise in the past that I had put the cost down as 1% of GDP, but from further research I realise I was wrong, it was even cheaper than I thought to be in the biggest global market in the world. UKIP will also never mention just how many jobs might be lost by pulling out of the EU, or just how many businesses might leave the UK if we pulled out of the EU. They also don't mention that we actually need immigrants here to keep the country going, espcially in the health industry. They also can't seem to make up their minds just how many immigrants they would allow in, but it does seem to be rising.

As for their tax policies, where do I start. First it was going to be a one tax for all of 20% with the abolishing of National Insurance, this then rose to 25% for all, the last I heard they had changed it to a two tier system of 30% and then 40% when earnings hit a certain amount. In all of this muddle they have not said whether things like pensions and the NHS that are the two primary things funded by National Insurance will recieve the same funding. It has also been estimated that their tax plans will leave a £120BN black hole, they haven't mentioned what they are going to cut to fill this.

All in all they are a bunch of numbskulls with only one popular policy, a referendum on the EU. They will tell people all the negatives about the EU, but never the positives, never about the rights of the workers for instance that would dissapear overnight. Nothing about the fact we would still have to abide by EU rules for exporting our goods to EU countries, nothing about not being in on the latest free trade agreement that is about to be put together between the EU and the USA that is potentially worth umpteen billion to the UK.

So don't be fooled by Farage and his right wing Tory party, they have nothing to offer the UK that will benefit us in the main areas of the economy and employment.

A footnote to the person that says we will save billions from getting rid of 85,000 civil servants. I wonder if you have factored in their redundancy payments and the cost of another 85,000 people claiming benefits.

Answer 2

They want to build more prisons, substantially increase the armed forces (yet we're broke and have no enemy...), yet somehow pay for this by cutting taxes (mainly for the rich, would you believe it) and introducing a flat tax (very fair, that a poor man should see his living standards go down after paying tax while a rich man barely notices the bill).



They also want to privatize much of the NHS and education, slash welfare (at a time when there are no jobs!) and they oppose equal rights for gay people. And they deny science by claiming that climate change is a lie.



Seriously, screw these bigoted old fools. They only care about making rich men richer, and getting out of the EU is a big part of that. They want to repeal all of the rights consumers and workers have gained from it, while protecting the banker's casino in the City of London which bankrupted our country and gambled away our homes and jobs.

Answer 3

UKIP have a respectable manifesto (which does actually make more sense than the other main parties manifestos) but as you say it hasn't been thought through fully. A lot of their policies are subject to change in the coming months as they become a more mainstream party. The tax policies, for example, are not what they state on the website. Nigel Farage would introduce a two tier tax system which would be 30% tax on everything between £16k and £150k and 40% tax on everything above that. This system would actually increase tax revenue considerably due to an economic phenomenon known as the laffer curve effect. They would also cut VAT and corporation tax using the same principles.

Not only will the tax system raise more money, but it is estimated that we lose between £15bn and £65bn a year due to our membership of the EU, most of this being a lack of free trade deals with developing countries.

The "£120bn black hole" was just a media myth. They assumed that tax revenue would decrease by the same amount as the tax cuts (which I have already explained is fundamentally incorrect) and they assumed that there would be no spending cuts. UKIP plan to slash spending on unimportant projects (such as green subsidies and bureaucracy in the NHS) to help balance the books.



Overall, UKIPs policies don't quite add up. Of course, initially, they would have a budget deficit, but the deficit would certainly decrease to below what it is now. Perhaps after 2 terms in office (purely hypothetical as this scenario is very unlikely) they could have a budget surplus. But lets be honest, no other party has the answers. At least UKIPs policies are a step in the right direction and it would be far better for the economy for UKIP to be in power than any other main party.





@ Mac The Knife - I have had this argument with you too many times but I shall briefly repeat myself. Jobs will not be lost if we leave the EU. Free trade with the EU will not stop. How could the EU afford to? Too many jobs IN Europe rely on our free trade (nearly twice as many as we rely on). Immigration is a great short term solution to boost the economy as it increases the size of the workforce and decreases the wage rate, but (notwithstanding the social cohesion) it will create massive problems in the future when all these immigrants grow older and become dependent on the state. We already have aging population issues, so why create even more? The solution to this is to create a work permit scheme, where you can come here to work and then leave when you are no longer in work. UKIP do have an income tax policy of 20% and this has remained unchanged. Employee national insurance contributions are added to that 20% to make 31%. The tax rate was never 25%. Only recently have they began talks to increase taxes on the very richest, most likely to steal Labour support. Even your massively understated figure of 0.5% of GDP is surely enough to make us quit? Why waste the money? The EU would not be the largest trading block in the world if we created the Commonwealth Free Trade Area, which is UKIP policy.



@ Me - I'm sorry but it appears you are mistaken or haven't done your research. UKIP plan to increase the tax free allowance to £16,000, putting money directly into the working mans pocket and taking minimum wage earners out of tax completely. Please explain to me how this would lead to a decrease in a poor mans standard of living. I'm sorry, I'm lost on that matter. They have no intentions to privatise the NHS or education. They will cut bureaucracy in the NHS and not touch the front line services. They will revert back to a more rigorous education system and bring back grammar schools such that there is a grammar school in every local area in the UK (yet another example of helping the working class). You are correct that UKIP will slash welfare, but not before leaving the EU and cutting national insurance for employers to ensure that jobs are available. UKIP fully support equal rights for homosexuals and this is why they openly support civil partnerships having equal legal status as marriage, but they also respect the widely held religious view that marriage is between a man and a woman, so homosexual marriage would be an oxymoron and contradict itself. As for tax revenue in general I should point your attention (along with other socialists such as "Mac the Knife") to an economic phenomenon known as the laffer curve effect.

Answer 4

They have four different Manifesto's regarding four different issues, be clear. They only want to keep defense spending at 2010 levels, which is lower than the years before it. They do not want to raise spending by 40%. Matter in fact they want to abolish the Department of Ministry, this alone costs £6 billion per year, the UK would no longer have to bear the cost of keeping 85,000 civilian staff, which matter in fact would save more money. They would also like to replace the Trident system and reduce foreign operations.



Their tax-plan is another misconception you have. In the United Kingdom nearly 50% of GDP is spent by government. 18 pence in the pound goes on servicing government debt. They want to drastically reduce Taxation, but only alongside equally drastic cuts in public spending. UKIP wants to reduce expenditure by £90 billion at a stroke without reducing major public services and you can just as easily look up how they want to do it. You cannot tax your way back into solvency. High taxation kills economies, lower taxes would help the economy grow and tax revenue's would automatically go up (it's called supply-side-economics).



The truth is they are the most fiscally responsible party and actually talk about how they are going to do it.

Answer 5

Like Mr. Farrage says, we need to regain control of our country before we can make any kind of difference. So getting out of the EU should be our top priority. Because until we do, all this talk about policy is a complete waste of time. The LibLabCon sold out long ago. They are merely puppets now.

Answer 6

'Make sense'? Not to thick socialists that seem to want to import people to keep us out of work driving wages down and making us poorer, and burdening our NHS and ever crumbling jobs market, Not making sense to socialists that want to keep borrowing money we simply never had, and won't have for generations to come unless someone does something about it all.



Again Tom, you pick up on a couple of UKIP ideas, and you do not look at the big picture. Without guarding our national interests, the EU will not give any support on, without guarding our fishing grounds and territorial water, guarding our shorelines to protect us from enemies created by lovers of USA oil wars, and guarding our interests in Falklands oil exploration and production after years of cutbacks to armed forces by Labour and Tory.... Try remembering also who the hell created the existing problems re financial / economic unemployment, and the huge immigration problems. UKIP have not created those problems. Your party did that over previous generations, and LIBLABCON policies don't make sense therefore.



Not even sure why you need 'repeated' answers to your usual lame questions about UKIP, where your nonsense questions are becoming the daily yawn, rather like your lame Labour policies, where you can't put a fagg paper between Lab Con and Lib these days, and the three amigo parties of FAIL.





EDIT. I just gave you 'some' of the bigger picture in my previous comment. Sorry if you take offence to easily, and don't like being called a 'thick socialist', but it's apparently true, and your ignorance is obvious and outstanding to most but not quite all, so it needs to be said. You seemed to spend the last four years or so on here attacking the BNP when they were on your leftie radar, but now that UKIP are stealing your voters by the myriad, you seem to have taken issue with them now. Nobody would care much really, but you never even quote official sources in your personal vendetta against anything remotely right wing. And then, you won't listen to facts that are put before you like my last reply to your little leftie rant against UKIP that you called a question. So there's not much point in 'reasoning' with you, as your poisoned and brain-washed mind is obviously made up, and you are incapable of understanding anything other that 'tax and spend', 'boom and bust' PC, MC bla blah..... You're full of the usual anti kipper rubbish, yet offering not one iota of your own party solutions, that only fail anyway, as has been proven over the decades of meddling by your parties, and obvious to anyone with one brain cell between their ear holes. I also suggest that you read and inwardly digest Alien Politician's answer for a great answer, and a brilliant view of the bigger picture Tom.. PEACE!!!

Answer 7

This stuff is WAY over my head.



I would just suggest that the reason the EU was created in the first place was to address problems that remained splintered and to difficult to solve on a piecemeal basis.



Does that mean that things will be instantly better?



No, but it does mean that the CONTEXT for solving these problems has changed to a greater one, so the chances are greater for better solutions down the road.

Answer 8

Never read it and never will read it. But Nigel Farage is a force to be reckoned with and is that rare politician to challenge the government (George Galloway is another).

Imagine the free ride the 3 tory partys would have were it not for Farage.

Answer 9

The ukip party is made up of racist sexist homophobes who scrape votes by on a single issue wether or not the uk should remain part of euro. And quite frankly wether your pro euro or not the real question is why are they practically non existent north of the border?

Answer 10

Your farrago of misrepresentation and gibberish doesn't make much sense, no, but the UKIP manifesto does.



In brief, they wish to make this once again a free country and a democratic one, objectives which make sense to me.