Let Us Face The Future
The manifesto, today and in the past
The Labour manifesto launch in 2024 should lay to rest a standard cliché of political commentary. Time and again pundits will say that no government can be elected without a modicum of inspiration. The strategy of reassurance is too risky, too empty, too liable to fail. Launching the Labour manifesto in Manchester this morning, Keir Starmer made a virtue of the fact that it contained no surprises. Anyone watching closely will have already known, or been able to guess, its contents. The Labour party was not going to risk committing the sin of news. Twenty points ahead and a Prime Minister who, in the Sky TV interview last night, looked on the verge of giving up. All the incentives suggest that playing safe is the best plan.
A manifesto is a strange event in any case. Strictly speaking, the Salisbury convention states that the House of Lords will not vote down legislation included in the parties' election manifesto. The convention started to be observed under the 1945 Labour government when the Conservatives had a large majority in the House of Lords led by Viscount Cranbourne, later Lord Salisbury. In a Lords debate Salisbury said “it would be constitutionally wrong, when the country has so recently expressed its view, for this House to oppose proposals which have been definitely put before the electorate".
Yet the convention is deeply misleading as a guide to what actually happens. Most governments end up being defined by what happened to them, not by what they propose in an election manifesto. David Cameron made no mention of Brexit and Tony Blair none of Iraq. Ted Heath promised in the 1970 Tory manifesto to consult on Britain joining the European Community, which he then failed to do. The Conservatives' 1987 manifesto said “We will legislate… to abolish the unfair domestic rating system and replace rates with a fairer Community Charge” but they did not say, and did not know, how they would do it. The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto promised the abolition of tuition fees. Nigel Farage put this, as usual, in a colourfully-exaggerated way when he called the 2010 UKIP manifesto “486 pages of drivel”. On that, at least, we can agree.
The central theme of the Labour manifesto launch – economic growth – was a covert admission that a manifesto is only an opening gambit. So much will depend, for the Starmer government, on the rate of growth that it is hard to be precise on tax rates and spending plans. Apart from small fiscal adjustments, to non-dom status and private schooling, the tax plans were spare. Keir Starmer was asked what he might do in the event of growth not being as buoyant as he hoped, and he wisely ignored the question altogether. It is not likely that today’s event will prove to be a reliable guide to the importance of a Labour government. It was a deliberately light document, designed to facilitate the campaign rather than define the government to come.
Election manifestoes have changed a lot over the years. The claim that once they were full of policy and now they are relatively thin is, in fact, untrue. Labour's 1945 manifesto had just seven pledges. In 2019 the manifesto contained one hundred and sixty. Indeed, the very earliest party manifestos were little more than a letter from the party leader to electors. The Labour manifesto of 1900 stated, with crushing abstract solemnity: “The object of these measures is to enable the people ultimately to obtain the Socialisation of the Means of Production, Distribution, and Exchange, to be controlled by a Democratic State in the interests of the entire Community… ". The Conservative manifesto of the same year was a letter from Lord Salisbury in which he said, rather grandly: “The gravest questions must be dealt with. The Imperial Power over the territories of the two South African Republics, which, as events have proved, was unwisely relinquished, must be rebuilt upon durable foundations”.
The demand for specific policies is a modern one and it is rooted in the declining trust afforded to political parties. When politicians enjoyed more trust they could be grand and sweeping. Today, they try to make small and instantly redeemable promises. This makes the manifestoes both longer and somehow less satisfyingly full. The other staple of contemporary scrutiny – at times it seems like it might be the only journalistic inquiry available – is how the party will find the money. The anticipation of this question also leads to safety in drafting, especially for a Labour party which remains frightened by the accusation of profligacy.
The following words are typical of Labour manifestoes: “Our country, no civilised country, can afford the human waste, the industrial and economic waste, involved in these policies. We in the Labour Party reject them absolutely, and we describe in this Manifesto the real constructive alternative, and how we shall pay for it”. That could easily have come from the preface to Labour’s 2024 manifesto, read out by Keir Starmer while Rachel Reeves looked on, sternly. In fact that comes from the letter written by Michael Foot to the electors in the preface to the Labour manifesto in 1983.
The 2024 manifesto is not very long and it is absolutely not a suicide note. It is a sensible, deliberately flat piece of writing in a political culture that rewards safety. In the political marketplace politicians respond to incentives like anyone else and the incentive today was to be sound, to be solid, to be reassuring, to exhibit all the virtues that Keir Starmer does in fact personify. It was not exciting. It was not a revelation. But it will work and it will leave the question of what the Labour government will really be like for another day.