Welcome to F.T. Politics, a weekly podcast on British politics from the Financial Times.

I'm Jonathan Derbyshire Executive Comment Editor, and in this episode we will be discussing a busy week in the general election

campaign which all three main parties launch their manifestos. To do this I'm

delighted to be joined by George Parker the F.T.'s political editor, Matt Singh, a

polling and election expert who's crunching the numbers for the

FT during the campaign, Julian Glover, writer and former Number 10 advisor, Robert Shrimsley,

the FTS editorial director, and the political commentator Miranda Green.

Thank you all for joining me.

The Conservatives launched their manifesto on Thursday,

and in doing so, appeared to break with the decades-long Thatcherite

consensus.

The document declared that the tourists do not believe in untrammeled free markets.

And to that end, promise new rules to assert more control over business with plans for fresh oversight over mergers and moves to tackle rip-off pricing in the energy and telecommunications markets.

George, Theresa May denied at the press conference yesterday that there is such a thing as

Measm, but it's hard not to see a radical break with the tenets of Thatcherite faith here, isn't it?

Well, I think so, and it was fairly clear from page 9 of the manifesto what this was all about.

It was sending a signal to potential labor photos who might switch to the Tories that she was

binning the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

Now whether that actually amounts to reality, I don't know, but certainly the rhetorical break was there,

but certainly in substance there was a sign that she was prepared to take on traditional Tory voters, particularly the pensioner votes.

In an attempt to reposition the Tory party, slap-banging into Labour territory, which is of course why she was launching the manifesto in Halifax and in an old carpet mill.

I thought you were looking for a definition of mayism.

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