Good morning. Will here. Today is Labour’s official manifesto release. What will it mean?
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Unless Rishi Sunak has popped down to his local bookie this morning and placed a million-pound bet on a Conservative defeat – which, to be fair, seems possible* at this point – today’s big political event will be the launch of Labour’s manifesto. Keir Starmer is about to announce his party’s plan for government in Manchester in a speech in which he will declare Labour “the party of wealth creation” and say that economic growth is “our core business – the end and the means of national renewal”.
One of the main objectives of the Labour campaign is to offer people hope, in contrast with a Tory campaign that offers insecurity and the idea that Labour would raise taxes (everyone would raise taxes). Is that hope justifiable?
Possibly. One reason to be cheerful is that our economy and the policies that manage it are exceptional in a number of ways. Giles Wilkes, a former No 10 adviser on economic policy and senior fellow at the Institute for Government, told me that if Britain “just moved back towards the median in terms of what other countries regard as normal – normal levels of pro-growth, devolved local administrations, second-tier cities, a better relationship with Europe, a normal, functioning skill system that doesn’t change every few years – you can see the sustainable growth rate eventually rising by half a percentage point. Which sounds measly in a manifesto, but would be revolutionary compared to what the Tories did.”
But a return to the mean involves a lot of “hard, boring governance”, Wilkes said, requiring years (probably ten years) of resolve and forensic attention to detail. “But it’s not impossible. And that’s what they should be shooting for.”
However, Labour’s manifesto also includes some big numbers – 1.5 million homes, 100,000 new nursery places – that imply doing more than just acting normal. For many years the UK has concentrated on creating jobs, or creating better jobs, but plans of this magnitude will come up against a problem Britain had in the 1950s and 1960s: where are the people? Where are all these builders and nursery workers going to come from?
The answer used in previous decades – immigration – would be very difficult to swing politically. YouGov polling shows that a major reason for the Tories being on the brink of electoral disaster is its perceived failure on immigration and asylum, which 93 per cent of respondents see as one of the top issues facing the country.
If immigration is like getting a takeaway – faster, easier and in many cases provides something you wouldn’t have been able to make yourself – then the home-cooked recipe is health and education. The number of working-age people in the UK who are out of work due to long-term sickness or disability is at a record high of 2.8 million, and continues to grow at 40,000 new disability benefit claims per month. The Tory answer to this is to assume these people are scroungers and to promise a vague but punitive-sounding programme of “reform” (benefit cuts).
But when I spoke to Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, recently, she told me that there “doesn’t seem to be much evidence of people not wanting to work” but that the problem is of “a growing ill-health among the population in quite a general sense”. Very roughly this could be described as a problem of young people who can’t get clear paths into work from school and becoming less mentally healthy, and older people who can’t get GP appointments developing musculoskeletal problems, and both groups getting to the point at which they can no longer work.
Wilkes said the government has trouble knowing exactly what’s going on in the labour market because the response rates to surveys are so low, but he agrees that the UK could invest more in its people: “Other countries with better-funded welfare systems are able to give workers the confidence to shift towards better jobs, and we haven’t really done that. That’s a real issue. It should be one of the focuses of the industrial strategy – not how can I create jobs, but how can I make each individual work more productively?”
* Clearly this doesn’t seem possible, not least because Sunak would make relatively little money from doing so: the bookies are offering odds of 1/41 on Labour winning the most seats, so he’d be risking a million to win £24,390.
Will’s picks
Andrew writes on what a Labour win would mean for Britain. The potential size of Keir Starmer’s victory could, he says, allow “more space for political courage”.
From America, Jill Filipovic delves into the fascistic undertones of the Republicans’ “pro-family” rhetoric.
Leonard Benardo reviews Ronnie Grinberg’s book on the New York Intellectuals and masculinity.
Watch Hannah and Ben discuss the latest Tory concession in the election campaign: Grant Shapps saying Labour is on course for a “super-majority”.
Mailshot
WSJ: Elon Musk says shareholder vote on his pay package is winning
Guardian: Cameron calls Sunak aide who bet on election “very foolish”
FT Big Read: Have the Tories squandered their years in power?
Jonathan Chait: Hunter Biden conviction blows up Republican conspiracies
John Lloyd: Can France’s president hold his nerve?
Katy Waldman: What Covid did to fiction
Anil Gomes: Remembering Daniel Dennett
Ross Andersen: A wild plan to avert sea-level rise
William Davies: Anticipatory anxiety
Ben’s take
Poll-wise, the situation hasn’t changed that much in terms of who’s leading what and by how much. The polls haven’t changed for over a year. But people’s comprehension of them has. In last year’s locals the results were being written up as probable hung parliament territory for Labour, even though they resembled how the country would vote if it was a landslide year – ie, now. Today, commentators appear to be unsure about the scale of the win. But the identity of the loser? No question.
This has all felt inevitable. In 2022, just after Liz Truss regained her composure and resigned as prime minister, Ipsos found six in ten of us believed the coming election should be a change election. That number rose to seven in ten at the start of this year.
Now YouGov has done its own polling, and the cross-breaks (the make-up of polling data) are killer. Because when asked whether the election should be a time for change, we find even the election-winning Conservative base of 2019 is split. Not overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the Conservatives, but split. Some inevitably know that this means a change to Labour. Others want it to be a change to Reform. And others can’t bring themselves to vote at all.
When your election-winning base is as split as this, I have to conclude there really is no coming back. There wasn’t 12 months ago and there isn’t now. The polls have yet to narrow. And so far there is very little reason for them to do so.
Is it not strange that Labour cannot even trust the electorate with the promise that they will change the categories of Council Tax, set in 1990 when a house cost less than £100,000. Michael Hazeltine owned an estate worth £4 million at the time yet set the highest category of council tax at 350,000. Would he get away with that today, yet the Tories won the 1992 election.