Both will offer everything to everyone. Then the Tories will claim that Corbyn has an unfunded madcap plan to give free internet and dental checks to the rich and Billionaires, while ruining the pension funds of the poor, and Corbyn will claim that Boris is selling the NHS to Trump. May made a total mess of her manifesto which deliberately upset her own supporters. It may happen, but I can’t believe that Boris will make the same mistake....but we will see.....
This is a fair point. There was one single mistake in the May manifesto, where they took a massive attack on their core voting group. They then refused to amend the policy. Then partly amended it. Then said they hadn't amended it. They were also so cautious of anyone outside of Nick Timothy they weren't even briefing favourable right wing journalists, so the chaos couldn't be smoothed over in the Mail and the Telegraph.
The question may be, will lots of singular mistakes have as big an impact as the one central one last year?
I do get the same sense from Johnson's plan that things aren't really going to play for him as with May, (which I didn't get from Cameron in 2015) but I sense he's a bit more adaptable than her.
The focus gets more intense once the manifestos are out. That was the big turning point for Labour last time. Forget the Oh Jeremy Corbyn chants, or the big rallies, the manifesto made a huge difference. The Conservatives were unable to paint it as unrealistic.
I will go on to say, if they don't want to start plummeting again, they will need to make it seem unrealistic. It's more ambitious this time, so certainly more opportunities to do so. If they fail though, and people get a hint that lottos the manifesto is possible momentum could swing for Labour again.
So far though, the Tories are holding up quite well.
