Great Britain’s 2024 Election Manifesto Season: Promises, Promises, and More of the Same!!
Great Britain’s 2024 Election Manifesto Season: Promises, Promises, and More of the Same!!
It is that time of year when an ever-suffering public is deluged with seductive manifestos- written declarations of political parties’ aims and policies, and plans for their implementation-which promise the earth but often deliver little or next to nothing over the ensuing parliamentary term. For a reality check, you only have to revisit the various 2019 party manifestos and match the listed promises against their delivery. If we chose to focus on GB-wide parties, leaving out those with provincial remits (Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party), we have the manifestos of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democratic, and Green parties to consider this year; Reform UK’s manifesto is awaited.
It is unreasonable to expect members of the public to find the time to read these wordy, repetitive, cliché-ridden, and jargon-infested documents. Labour’s manifesto runs to 142 pages, the Conservative and Unionist Party has managed with just 80 pages, while the Liberal Democrats have spread their thoughts across 117 pages.
Each party’s political agenda is defined by their perceptions of public preferences, which in turn are defined by the attitudes and beliefs of their core voter base (s), and further informed by focus groups, opinion surveys, and the machinations of political strategists. A stable economy, sustained economic growth, and the levelling up of regional inequalities remain universally desirable objectives for all political parties. Enhanced national security (investment in defence; the nuclear deterrent), controlled and manged immigration, a reduction in neighbourhood crime, a responsive healthcare service (NHS workforce retention and recruitment; access to GPs, dental care, and mental care; shorter hospital waiting times), equitable access to social care, tackling the climate emergency (clean energy, energy security, the net-zero transition), investment in schools, affordable childcare, skills training, job creation, affordable housing, and environmental protection all take pride of place in most manifestos. The parties inevitably differ in their attitudes to Brexit, seeking to either reverse the process (Liberal Democrats, Greens), proposing to “unlock the benefits” (Conservatives, Reformists), or keeping a neutral stance (Labour). When it comes to the distressed privatised utilities (water companies, big five retail energy companies), only the Greens have unequivocally committed to renationalisation.
The ruling Conservative Party, whose demise is widely predicted, has committed to a ‘Clear Plan, Bold Action, Secure Future’, which emphasises reducing government debt and borrowing, cutting taxes, investing in infrastructure, regulatory reform, a pruned government bureaucracy, and new trade deals. For the Conservatives, tax cuts require to be funded by cuts in welfare spending, targeting supposedly able-bodied but ‘economically inactive’ recipients of government largesse. Conservatives benefit from their track record of “achievements” over the past fourteen years, often overshadowed by their many failures.
The Labour Party, main challenger to the Conservatives, has come up with a ‘fully costed, fully funded, credible plan to kickstart economic growth’ and to ‘create wealth’, supported by private investment.
A party manifesto is a public statement on intended government spending, which in turn depends on tax revenues and on government borrowing, the latter being constrained by the costs of servicing national debt, which stood at 101.3 per cent of GDP at the end of Quarter 4 in 2023.
The current tax system is widely unpopular, inviting demands for fairness and simplification from all quarters, including those seeking more equitable redistribution of wealth and those seeking to protect their assets and income from a covetous state. To boost its electoral prospects, the Labour Party has thus committed to ‘a tax lock for working people-a pledge not to raise rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT’, and to capping corporation tax at 25 per cent for the entire term of parliament to appease Big Business. By its own calculations, Labour’s ambitions require to be funded by £8 billion in taxes- to be raised by abolishing non-domiciled tax status for wealthy foreign nationals, by applying 20 per cent VAT to private school fees (to pay for 6,500 new teachers in key subjects), by introducing a windfall tax on big oil and gas firms (to pay for the publicly-owned Great British Energy), by closing the tax gap caused by tax avoidance, and by increasing stamp duty on house purchases by non-UK residents. There is some doubt, however, as to whether the sums add up, meaning that a shortfall in tax revenues is likely. Besides, an injection of money isn’t enough by itself to provide more teachers, doctors, nurses, and mental health professionals, which also requires long periods of training for suitable and committed individuals.
A five-year parliamentary cycle encourages short-termism at the cost of long-term investments, the benefits from which take time to declare themselves. The state of the public finances is such that ambition has had to take second place, of necessity, to fiscal prudence. This stark reality has not deterred the publication of ambitious manifestos, which lack detail on costing and also cannot be relied upon to provide any quick-fixes for a “broken” nation. Manifesto pledges are not binding, and there is no statutory obligation for the victorious party to deliver on manifesto promises. Come Election Day, most voters are thus more likely to be guided by their perceptions of opposing political leaders, their own long-held and cherished beliefs, and their pet single-issue concerns (such as immigration), rather than by the many promises of the party manifestos.
Ashis Banerjee