Ross Clark

The most dangerous thing about Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today, blaming terror attacks in Britain on wars we have fought abroad, is that it is partly true. The temptation for the Conservatives will be to show outrage at the words: 'Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home' and to accuse Corbyn of exploiting the Manchester bombing for his own political gain. But they would be extremely foolish to do so because they will be unable to argue away the assertion that British military involvement in the Middle East has increased the risk of terror attacks at home.

So, the Conservatives have capitulated. After days of facing negative headlines about the ‘dementia tax’ Theresa May has given in and announced that there will, after all, be a cap on care costs faced by an individual. No wonder modern governments find it so hard to eliminate their structural deficits. So loud are the protests when they propose any tax increase or cut in spending that they are doomed to limp along with an ever-greater gap between what they feel compelled to spend and what they are politically able to raise in revenue. Public opinion may be king, but it doesn’t add up to a balanced budget.

When the main opposition party is proposing to jack up corporation tax from 19 per cent to 26 per cent the Conservatives don’t have to do too much to claim the mantle of the pro-business party, but with Theresa May suddenly attracting the nickname ‘Red Theresa’, just how business-friendly would a post 9 June May government be? First, the losers. First Philip Green and other company-owners who leave pension funds under-funded: the Conservatives are promising punitive fines and a possible new criminal offence for those who ‘deliberately or recklessly put at risk the ability of a pension scheme to meet its obligations’.

The consequence of last week’s leak of a draft Labour manifesto is that all eyes today have fallen on what was missing from the draft: the costings. There is a very big assumption in Labour’s figures: that when you raise taxes you get all the extra revenue that you would expect to receive. The reality, of course, is that when you raise taxes you change people’s behaviour which might lead to them paying less tax. With a 45 per cent income tax levy above £80,000 and a 50 per cent rate over £123,000 higher rate taxpayers would have a greater incentive to find some way of avoiding tax – either by converting income into capital gains, shovelling more into their pensions – or by scarpering abroad.

I can understand why Theresa May should want to toy with the idea of having 'workers’ representatives on board'. As with Tony Blair and his promise to be tough on crime, and David Cameron and gay marriage, it has become a tradition in modern-day elections that a party campaigning from a position of strength makes an audacious raid behind the lines to plant a flag in some prominent place in enemy territory. It creates the impression that you are not merely trying to pitch for votes at the fringes of your opponents’ traditional homeland – you are confident enough to present yourself as a government for everyone. May’s proposals are, however, highly tokenistic.

Theresa May’s return to Downing Street on the morning of 9 June will surprise no-one, but there is one thing political commentators will be left to puzzle over: just why did the Liberal Democrats do so badly? Tim Farron’s party should be big winners in this general election. If not matching the 62 seats they won in 2005 or the 57 they notched up in 2010 they should at least be going a long way to reversing the collapse they suffered in 2015 as many of their voters punished them for their role in the coalition and for Nick Clegg’s backtrack on his tuition fees pledge in particular. Conditions are hugely favourable for them. Labour has drifted far to the left as it did in 1983 when the then Liberal-SDP Alliance won 25 per cent of the vote.

If Emmanuel Macron were British, would he be a Tory, Lib Dem or a Blairite? Or would he be blubbing into a handkerchief in a TV studio calling himself a ‘survivor’ of seduction by his teacher while his wife was banned from the teaching profession, if not put through the mill by investigators from Operation Yewtree? If anyone doubts the gulf in societal attitudes between Britain and France, the relationship between Macron and his wife Brigitte Trogneux provides a rather good illustration. While there is no suggestion they had sex while he was a minor, enough is known about the couple to know how the nature of their meeting would have gone down this side of the Channel.

Next Monday, while the village fair is raging outside, I will be inside working as on any other Monday morning. Will I be disappointed to miss out on a day of Mayday fun? Not a bit of it. There are only so many steam rallies one wants to attend, only so many seaside-bound traffic jams one can bear to join. I would far rather work through every bank holiday and take time off when I feel like it, when the roads aren’t full of bikers and there are fewer people out and about trying to force themselves to have fun.

One of the consequences of the early election is that Britain will find itself without a functioning parliament for six weeks at a time when arguably it has never needed one more. I am sure that many MPs will feel entitled to a holiday after yet another election campaign – or at least those who are not sent into premature retirement. But what about Parliamentary business? The Great Repeal Bill requires debate and scrutiny – and in Parliament, not the TV studio. As thing stand, Parliament will rise in the first week of May.   It will then reconvene in the middle of June only to break up for the summer recess little over a month later. It will not return until October, after the party conference season.

It isn’t clear what changed Theresa May’s mind on calling an early general election, something which, as recently as 20 March, she was adamant would not happen. But could the trigger have been nothing to do with Brexit at all? An interesting date is 16 March, when Phillip Hammond reversed the proposed increase in National Insurance on the self-employed which he had announced in his Budget only the week before. The fuss seemed to catch Hammond – and presumably Theresa May, too – by surprise. It seemed as if it simply hadn’t occurred to them that they ought to feel bound by David Cameron’s 2015 manifesto, which promised no rise in the rates of income tax or national insurance throughout the life of the Parliament.

Only the EU, an organisation with four presidents, could have two ‘chief negotiators’ charged with agreeing the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU. I am not sure, then, how seriously to take the figure of Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian MEP who has been appointed the European Parliament’s chief negotiator. If we agree something with him, do we then have to agree it with Michel Barnier, the EU’s other ‘chief negotiator’, and if they can’t agree, which ‘chief’ is really in charge? All I know is that what we have seen from the EU’s leaders in months since Britain voted to leave the EU is a good reminder of why the country made that decision.