1. Free competition (including cartels and monopolies) is dealt with by the independent competition authorities (OFT and CC), which are powerful, tightly-focused, and have bloody good lawyers. This means politicians do not meddle in competition cases.
2. DTI has a very small competition team, which simply sets the policy, which is completely consistent with a belief in entrepreneurial and openly competitive British industry.
3. The UK competition regime is generally regarded as the best in Europe, and one of the few best in the world.
4. Abuse of IP law is a matter for the courts.
5. As for getting rid of the DTI, that’s one option, but it’s just moving civil servants around from one department to another. The competition policy team would presumably go to the Treasury, as might Business Relations. Employment law might go to the DWP, science and technology to DfES, energy to DCLG, trade promotion to FCO (though God knows they’d screw it up).
6. But this wouldn’t reduce staff numbers - anything the DTI does that’s a “luxury” it’s long ago stopped. Indeed it’s been cut so far that it’s already had to stop a number of activities which all cost-benefit analyses show gave an excellent return to UK business.

Tighten up the Parliament Act and the Civil Contingencies Act:
 http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/civilcontingencies.pl#coup

Set up a quango whose job it is to de-spin government statements.

But I agree that first and foremost we need Blair out for the reasons mentioned by other. So I’m tactically voting for the candidate who is most likely to beat the Labour MP (a LibDem).

There’s a mistaken belief is that it’s pointless to vote LibDem as they’ll never form a government. However, splitting the Tory and LibDem vote is exactly how Labour has kept a massive majority since 1997. Thus I encourage everyone to promote tactical voting ahead of the election:
 http://www.deep-trance.com/archives/can_the_tories_actually_win.html

Therefore:

1. Not strictly policy, but the party needs to expand its membership into the realm of the living. It can only do so by adopting non-cranky policies that are in tune with the public under retirement age. If it does so, it can, just as Labour did, ignore its “base” of whose votes it is assured anyway, and aim for the centre ground.
2. It needs to pick a loud, public fight with the editors of the Daily Mail, such that the bond between them can never be restored. The Mail appeals to people who will only ever vote Tory in a general election, even if they sometimes protest in unimportant contests by voting for UKIP. It is loathed and detested by everyone else.
3. Most important for creating an impression of non-crankiness, the party must commit itself to membership of the EU, and then shut the fuck up about it. It should continue to oppose individual insane EU policies, such as the CAP, but talking about withdrawal or unilaterally ignoring European policies needs to become as acceptable in Tory circles as admiring Iain Duncan Smith’s eyebrows. Mentioning the EU should be grounds for instant sacking.
4. They need to come to terms with the fact that people aren’t very bothered about the amount of tax they’re paying right now. Thus talking about huge tax cuts just makes them look irresponsible. They could gain, however, by committing themselves to getting rid of the “stealth taxes” - insurance premium tax, tax on pensions, council tax, and so on - because these annoy people by being unexpected.
5. Purge every other trace of cranky libertarian radicalism from the manifesto. That doesn’t mean all radicalism: just the ill-thought-out mindless bits. All privatisations, private finance initiatives, constracting out programmes, and so on must be thoroughly scrutinised and costed on public-interest grounds. Where the private sector is involved in public services, the party should commit itself to competition wherever possible. It should also commit itself to examining all those programmes already operating to reform those that are not serving the public interest.
6. Adopt New Labour’s constitutional reforms, which are mostly sensible as far as they go, and put them on a sound legal footing that gets rid of the contradictions and confusions. Devolve enough power to local government to make people actually take some notice of what it does. Resist any urge to control the behaviour of devolved authorities from the centre.
7. The public is supremely sick of people messing with the structure of the public services, and unconvinced that giving them more money really helps, but would like them to actually work. Returning control to the professionals and genuine representatives of patients/parents/etc is probably the only way to convince the public anything useful is happening.
8. A commitment to the maintenance of civil liberties. And none of this crankiness about scrapping the human rights act, which is just shameless Daily Mail pandering. Doing a way with most of the Blunkett legislation and the worst bits of the anti-terrorist laws would be a start.
9. To make up for (8), which will undoubtedly be unpopular with more of the press than just the Mail, do some populist things that don’t negatively impact civil liberties. Raise speed limits to represent the actual speeds at which it is safe for competent drivers to drive. Allow overtaking on the left where it is clearly safe too do so to get rid of those endless overtaking-lane tailbacks. Allow people to use force in defense of life and property according to a “reasonableness” test that is biased in their favour, as opposed to the present “proportionateness” test, which says that if you confront a thief with a shotgun and he only has a switchblade you need to ask him to wait while you fetch the kitchen knife. The list of possibilities is endless.
10. Apply some imagination to reform of the House of Lords. The public is never going to trust an appointed chamber, and an elected one would just be a waste of money, needlessly duplicating the commons. The country does need a revising chamber full of knowledgeable, independent, people, though. I would suggest random selection from a list of eligible candidates, so as to get a cross sectional representation of various interest groups (lawyers, churchmen, doctors, educationalists, industrialists, trade unionists, “ordinary people”, and so on), possibly with some electoral component.

Scrap every single tax except for VAT (and raise VAT, if you like, but not above 20%).

Have a referendum on the death penalty.

Legalise all drugs.

Increase military spending.

Privatise universities.

Write a simple constitution that does nothing except protect freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of association, right of jury nullification, freedom from government interference, right to bear arms, etc.

Yes, I said “right to bear arms”. Re-legalise guns. Re-legalise self-defense.

While acknowledging that criminals have rights (not to be beaten by the police, for instance), make it clear that they do not include the right to a safe working environment or a compliant victim, and that victims’ rights are always ascendant over criminals’.

Reaffirm the ancient principles of copyright law as a tool for protecting the individual creator, and repeal and resist any moves by corporations to distort it for their own purposes.

Make it clear that UK law transcends EU law within the UK. Declare a policy of treating the EU as what it was originally sold as: a free trade area, not a political union. Resist any EU trade restriction practiced in the name of free trade. Try to teach the Europeans what “free trade” actually means.

Federalise: take as much power as possible out of the hands of Whitehall and give it to parish – yes, parish – councils. In areas where there are no parish councils, do not be tempted to create them: give the people 6 months to do it themselves. Give the parish councils the right, but not the obligation, to devolve power upwards to local councils, who in turn have the right to devolve any of their power upwards to Parliament. These powers include running the police force and other emergency services.

Privatise all schools and replace state-run education with state funding assistance for private education. Have this assistance decided as a set amount per child, with no extra benefits for certain types of school or whatever. Also extend this funding to home-schoolers.

Make national insurance both optional and worthwhile.

Scrap the N “H” “S”. Make A&E the 4th emergency service. As with education, give state funding assistance to those who need it to afford healthcare.

Get rid of all pointless bureaucratic rules that people currently have to obey in order to claim benefits. (E.g. “You’re not entitled to unemployment benefit because you didn’t sign on when you were between jobs for three weeks two years ago.”)

Have MPs’ salaries decided by a referendum two years after every general election. And have general elections occur on the same date every five years.

Bring back the old law that, when an MP is appointed to the Cabinet, they must immediately stand for re-election.

Make the Lords half elected, quarter appointed, quarter inherited, and disallow political parties and whips from the Lords.

Reintroduce the old 10% margin of error for speed limit enforcement.

That should do it.

What to do about state pensions, violent crime and Britain’s record prison population, the finding of a survey by the OECD which put the UK 27th out of 30 countries for the percentage of youngsters in full-time education after the age of 16, traffic congestion on motorways and inner urban areas, and the promised referendums on the EU Constitution and joining the Euro?

2. Manifesto commitment to withdraw from Common Agriculture Policy, along with a big push on how CAP causes third world starvation. I’d get manifesto commitments not to cede any more power to Brussels, and manifesto commitments not to pay into the Brussels budget until proper audit were done, and seen to be done.

I’d have a select commitee specifically to talk to the EU Auditors on a monthly basis. (In case you haven’t guessed, Slowjoe is a proud European, but also a EU-rophobe.)

3. Excellence in Education competitions, where talent is identified in things like spelling, maths and history. Ideally, learning should be made fun. How would I do this? I think I’d put out regional tenders for different private companies to organise bits of the competitions, with the DofE organising the finals, in association with Oxford (for the Arts) and Cambridge (for the Sciences).

I would want learning to become sexy

Slowjoe himself would definitely push for deregulation in the style of the removal the video board, but I doubt that would be easy to sell in a manifesto.

In most other countries, a really small-scale release of the kind he’s after might be feasible - but in Britain, legislation introduced by a supposedly red-tape-cutting small-business-friendly Tory government is actively preventing him from entering the market. And there’s no child protection argument here, as it’s not going to get anything stronger than a PG certificate (a U is more likely), and no child is going to be interested in it in the first place.

Exploitation cinema and especially pornography are perhaps as laissez-faire capitalist as the modern world gets, yet whilst they flourished in state worshipping europe they were supressed by the supposed market fundamentalists in Britain.

I’d vote Tory if they had a good plan for bringing individual and institutional autonomy to public education (I favour putting the money in a private account to be spent on whatever educational goods and services the holder sees fit), provided they had the wits to sell it to the public and implement it effectively.

Such an inititaive could have across the board appeal, with self help for the traditionalists and the notion that you don’t have to put up with a raw deal for those warring against exploitation and whatnot.

It’s on selling to the public that I don’t trust the Tories. Think of the fuss from those subsections of the right and, bizarrely, the left, that are terrified of self organiztion amongst the masses, fearing as they do a pandemic of individualism in the rampant, corrosive and competitive forms, the proliferation of market values, and sin against the Holy Ghost, obsession with choice.

I’d gladly abolish the 1984 Video Recordings Act - it’s completely redundant in the present age of easy Amazon imports, and it puts a major obstacle in the path of small-scale video distributors wishing to release highly uncommercial niche titles by requiring them to stump up a four-figure sum to the British Board of Film Classification. Existing criminal legislation is more than adequate to cover things like graphic animal cruelty and child pornography, which are the only things the BBFC gets especially exercised about these days anyway.

I have no problem with the BBFC continuing its role in an advisory capacity, as happens with cinema releases - in practice, the vast majority of distributors would doubtless continue to use their services under pressure from major video chains (something similar happens in the US). But the pressure would be economic rather than legal, which is much healthier.

I have never known an administration that has lied, and lied, and lied again on just about every conceivable controversy. Yes, yes, *all* governments stretch and contort that always slippery concept, Truth, but never on the scale of this one. Even ‘that woman’, when she was forced to duck and dive, did so in a manner that left no-one in any doubt that she was extremely uncomfortable. But this lot, are just like an old-style Soviet government, their instant, first re-action is to lie, and to keep it up until, usually the prints, prove what liars they are.

It started within months of Blair’s regime, with the Ecclestone case. I can still remember when he came out with the classic, “Hey I’m a pretty straight sort of a guy”, I knew instantly that he was a liar. All his ministers took his cue and they’re still lying, and the list of those caught out continues to grow.

I’m no shrinking naif, I know that politicians need to be slippery, but they need to slither within certain bounds, and this lot went beyond the pale years ago. I do not assume the Tories will definitely be better, but if they prove to be as bad or even worse, then I fear for my country, because, in desperation people will turn to fringe politics for someone who means what they say, however potty and vile, and does what they say.

You could probably cut the home civil service to about a third of its present size, and pay them a competitive salary so you recruited people who were as good as you needed and still save money.

Pledge never to introduce ID cards. The state should know some things about you (for taxation purposes, say), but these should be tightly prescribed.

Don’t mess with the voting system. It’s not brilliant, but it’s not broken.

Don’t ban things just because you can. (I’m thinking of fox-hunting, here, but I’m sure there are other examples.)

Put more police on the beat (you don’t have to recruit more; Labour are quite right to claim that numbers have gone up, but they’re all desk bound, or in specialist units) and bring in some kind of sensible uniforms. Most policemen these days just look comical. Rationalise speed limits (ie raise them on motorways).

Introduce fewer laws per year, and insist that each is properly debated. Scale down the Home Secretary’s interference with judges. He’s unlikely to be as legally qualified, and he hasn’t got the time to consider cases on their merits. Judges are among the best trained people in the country. Some of them may be reactionary fossils, but most know what they’re doing.

I’m with you on your suggestions. It’s pretty obvious that my main villain is David Blunkett.

An ethical foreign policy would be nice too.