It is true that election manifestos can’t be compared like with like – and in recent years, the variation of detail, trustworthiness and meaning has become more pronounced than ever. But it is also true that there are things to be gleaned from their recurring themes. Moreover, there are objectively good ideas which may emanate from a party that will never be able to enact them, but nevertheless deserve exposure.
Looked at that way, it’s a great year to be a dentist, or in construction. Every party (bar Reform and the SNP) talks a great game on dental provision – even, ironically, the Conservatives, who have a £200m “recovery plan”. Toothache doesn’t feel very metaphorical when you have it, but the issue speaks to a broader truth that Keir Starmer made explicit in his manifesto launch speech: that the real-life impacts of degraded public services are too stark to ignore – which is precisely why everyone is pledging that the nothing-works years are over.
There’s thinking on housebuilding and planning reforms – areas where promises are often made but rarely kept. More original are proposals (unsurprisingly from the Greens) that all new-builds should conform to Passivhaus standards or equivalent and measures to end emissions from existing homes. All this would radically reduce household energy usage, so have an impact beyond housing, on net zero targets and the cost of living.
Labour’s warm homes plan is in the foothills of the same territory, while the Liberal Democrats make the same promise as the Greens. They and Plaid Cymru take aim at second homes and buy-to-holiday-let properties as a driver of housing shortage, the former suggesting a 500% council tax increase on them. Whether or not they’re in a position to enact these policies, this is quite a meaningful statement of allegiance. In a political landscape where everyone claims to hate homelessness as much as they love dentists, you have to watch pretty closely for these signals of whose interests take precedence, between the asset class and the rest. Labour plans to take on “fleeceholds” – rip-off leaseholders – but generally tacks away from oppositional framing where it can.
What about the workers? Labour has trenchant plans and a stated timescale – the first 100 days – for workers’ rights, banning zero-hours contracts, ending fire and rehire, and introducing basic rights from day one, on paternity leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal. The minimum wage proposals are also quite meaty: they intend to make it a “genuine living wage”, dismantling one of George Osborne’s great swindles: he simply started adopting the phrase, without any meaningful measure of whether or not people could live on it. The Low Pay Commission will see its remit changed, so that it takes into account the cost of living. It’s strange that it didn’t already do that, you might think. All change on 5 July, probably.
Ed Davey has been leading on care since the launch, and the proposals are a mixture of things that should have been done years ago (for instance, better career progression and recognition of skills in the sector); things that were done years ago, then were wrecked by austerity (the provision of care packages based on need, not ability to pay); and measures to improve the lives of unpaid carers, such as respite breaks and an increased carer allowance. The Greens echo a lot of this, with more on childcare; both parties pledge to remove the two-child benefit cap, though only the Greens offer an immediate uplift to universal credit, and only they aspire ultimately to a universal basic income.
Who do you have to vote for if you want to rejoin the EU? A manifesto trawl says it’s those smaller national parties with their big foreign policies, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. That’s more realistic from the SNP, of course, given that its first and foremost pledge is Scottish independence – or at least, fighting for it.
And what if you think a “wealth tax”, far from being a smallpox-like threat from which civilised society should recoil, might actually be quite helpful? Labour and the Conservatives will meet you by stamping out tax avoidance; most parties favour a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, bar Reform and the SNP, which makes an oblique reference to the idea as “a raid on north-east Scotland”. The Greens suggests a wealth tax of 1% annually on all assets over £10m, 2% on assets over a billion.
Ideas, ideas, from sublime to ridiculous. Reform thinks it can end NHS waiting times by giving tax incentives to pharmacists among other things, and restore law and order by ending police paperwork. The Faragists make anti-woke pronouncements that seem odd in printed form, like picking a fight in an empty bar. However, Reform does advocate scrapping interest on student loans, which – were it not for its pledge to radically reduce student numbers and shut down universities that don’t agree with it … sorry, that don’t respect “free speech” – might otherwise have turned a head or two.
Many manifestos, some good ideas: but even taken together, a blueprint for national renewal? Not quite. More’s the pity.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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