Robert Peston Robert Peston

Are Boris and Corbyn both playing us all for fools?

A question I don’t expect my colleague Julie Etchingham to put to the two party leaders in ITV’s debate is the one that has been nagging away at me for days: why is the policy-making that will underpin the election manifestos we’ll get from the parties over the next few days so lacking in intellectual rigour?

What we have from both parties are big ambitions – ‘free broadband for everyone’ from Labour, ‘Brexit totally done and dusted by the end of 2020’ from Boris Johnson – based either on a highly selective use of second-hand research (Labour’s analysis of the costs and practicability of nationalising full-fibre broadband roll-out) or predicated on the challenging notion that Johnson has near magical negotiating skills.

Politics these days seems all about tugging at our emotions, rather than coming up with proposals whose tyres can actually be kicked.

It is a degradation of discourse that first became conspicuous during the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Robert Peston
Written by
Robert Peston
Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.

Topics in this article

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in