The New Tory Manifesto

Dave the rave launches the New Tory election manifesto:

"This is a manifesto for a new kind of politics," he said."People power, not state power."

Among pledges in the manifesto are a community "right to buy scheme" - to allow people to protect post offices and pubs threatened with closure.

People would be able to get local referendums on any issue if 5% of residents backed it - and would be able to use them to veto high council tax rises.

Parents and charities would be allowed to set up state-funded schools - based on a model used in Sweden - and "unaccountable" police authorities would be replaced with a directly-elected official to set policing priorities, budgets and strategies. Some of the main manifesto pledges being:

MANIFESTO PLEDGES

*Community 'right to bid' to run post offices
*Eliminate bulk of structural deficit over a parliament
*Cut £6bn 'wasteful' spending in 2010/11
*Cut number of MPs by 10%
*Annual limit on non-EU economic migrants
*Give parents power to save local schools due to close
*Give voters power to sack MPs for "serious wrongdoing"
*Scrap ID cards
*MPs to get vote on repealing hunting ban
*Raise stamp duty threshold to £250k for first-time buyers