If opinion polls are to be believed, Labour is on course for a significant election victory. But what should the left make of its policy offer and its prospects for government? WILL BROWN casts his eye over the party’s pledges.
There were few surprises when Keir Starmer unveiled Labour’s general election manifesto at Co-operative headquarters in Manchester on 13 June. The party ground through its policy-making process over three years prior to annual conference last October and the leadership spent the intervening time diligently trimming key areas into a manifesto package finally agreed at the party’s ‘Clause V’ meeting in early June.
Reception on the party’s left was underwhelming and, rather unusually, the Unite union refused to fully endorse it, criticising what it saw as a watered down new deal for workers and opposing Labour’s plan to phase out new oil and gas licenses.
The manifesto highlights the party’s six ‘first steps’: creating economic stability, cutting NHS waiting times, improving border security, setting up Great British Energy, combatting anti-social behaviour and recruiting more teachers. These closely map onto Starmer’s ‘five missions’ announced in July 2023 and form the core sections of the manifesto.
These five areas are top and tailed by commitments to be a ‘mission-driven government’, to provide ‘strong foundations’ through economic stability, to constitutional reform (‘Serving the country’) and to international policy (‘Britain reconnected’) – all wrapped up by a statement on Labour’s ‘fiscal plan’.
Tax, spending & growth
To detail all the left of centre policies that could or should have been included would be an endless task. The key areas that have attracted comment from the left include overall economic policy, taxation and public spending, not least Labour’s steadfast refusal to countenance income tax, national insurance or VAT rises.
A chorus of voices have argued that Labour will need to make bolder tax pledges if it is to realise its other goals, including the IPPR which has proposed raising taxes on income derived from wealth at the same rate as income from work. Others claim that changes to how government borrowing is calculated could open up more space for Rachel Reeves to increase spending and that wealth taxes could substantially increase revenue.
Without such tax income, a Labour government will be relying solely on economic growth. Here the target is bold, as it aims to have the ‘highest sustained growth’ in the G7. How this would be measured isn’t clear (what is sustained growth?), and anyway it isn’t entirely within Labour’s gift to achieve.
Granted, growth rates in the G7 are sluggish – all European countries in the G7, and the Eurozone as a whole, are currently below 1% with only the US forecast by the IMF to reach 2.7% in 2024. This means it wouldn’t take much to improve the UK’s current position (sixth out of seven, on 0.5%) and the gap between the UK and the US isn’t a chasm.
But that in itself is a problem because the UK needs growth externally, as well as change internally, if Labour is to revitalise the UK economy. A huge amount rests on what some are predicting to be a post-election ‘bounce’.
All of Labour’s other goals – on public services, prosperity and standards of living – are dependent on growth. Many social democratic governments including those of Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan and Brown, have foundered on similar rocks.
Health service
Any spending constraints will most keenly be felt and judged in the NHS. While some have hailed the manifesto’s health service goals as a ‘transformative shift from cure to prevention’, others are more sceptical. As it stands the planned increases in NHS funding – limited though they are – are dependent on changes to the non-dom tax rules delivering the desired revenue.
While welcoming some of the manifesto pledges, the Socialist Health Association has warned that the NHS faces further decline without more significant increases in resources, a view echoed by the Nuffield Foundation and the King’s Fund.
Environment
Much has already been written about Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s decision to reduce the £28bn funding once promised for the ‘green new deal’. Nevertheless, some important environmental pledges remain, including to set up Great British Energy, achieve a zero-carbon electricity system by 2030, greatly expand of onshore and offshore wind power, and insulate Britain’s homes (although this commitment has also been reduced). These moves have been welcomed by some even If they can only be viewed as first steps towards tackling the climate crisis.
Net zero has been the focus of a long-running internal battle in Labour between climate activists and unions such as Unite and the GMB who want to defend jobs in the North Sea oil fields. Indeed, evidence of union opposition to green new deal policies is clear in the manifesto, which pledges that North Sea oil and gas production will continue ‘for decades to come’.
Locating Great British Energy headquarters in Scotland, where the ‘North Sea lobby’ is strongest, is probably an electorally savvy move, and it surely makes sense to manage the ‘green transition’ in a way that avoids the social collapse that accompanied the decline of heavy industry in the 1970s.
Wider pledges
Although unions were unhappy with what they saw as a watered down commitment to abolish zero-hours contracts, and the manifesto is strongly pro-business, significant aims to increase workers’ rights, and expand the power and role of the state, remain.
There are also some significant reforms proposed within and beyond the five core policy areas. These include reform of the House of Lords – to remove the remaining hereditary peers and require all Lords to retire once they reach 80 – plus a consultation on replacing the chamber entirely. Labour will also reduce the voting age to 16.
On international issues, Labour has committed to recognising a Palestinian state ‘as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution’ with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.
On the other hand there is no commitment to re-establishing the Department for International Development and only a vague pledge to meet the 0.7% target for international aid “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow” (these two had been mainstays of Labour manifestos for the past four elections).
Evaluation
In evaluating the overall package, many have understandably found it wanting. Aditya Chakrabortty has argued that Starmer’s manifesto is closer to that of Tory Ted Heath than Labour’s Harold Wilson. However, that argument rather misses the point that those elections took place in an era when much greater swathes of the economy were in public hands and there was a shared commitment to using the state directly to manage economic cycles.
Perhaps more instructive is a comparison with Tony Blair. In terms of electoral strategy, Starmer clearly shares much with Blair, and his backers on the right of the party are carriers of that flame. Accepting Tory tax and spending limits, and prioritising Tory voters and support from business are central to the strategy.
Nevertheless, increasing the role of the state, nationalising the railways and committing to improve workers’ rights are ‘hardly devoid of social democratic purpose’, as John Harris put it.
Future prospects
Whatever our reservations about the manifesto, a great deal rests on its success. A failure to change the political mood and deliver on key areas such as the cost of living and the NHS will make the election after this one a dangerous affair.
Whether or not there is a Tory meltdown on election night, the right will regroup. Whether it’s in Reform or under a Farage-like Tory leader, the extremist tendencies on the right of British politics will be waiting to feed on Labour failures, cheered on their allies abroad and in the right-wing media. And the clock will be ticking. As George Dibb wrote on Labour List, ‘voters don’t have the patience to wait ten years to see these promises delivered’.
In the immediate term, however, none of this is reason to withhold support for Labour. The manifesto comparison that really matters is with the current Tory offer as the Tories are the only other party that could conceivably form a government after this election.
By that measure, none on the left should have qualms about voting Labour. This remains the case even if, given the implosion of the Conservative party, you think a much bolder offer could have been made. Without it we can still hope John Harris is right: ‘If the expected result materialises, things will palpably feel better, fairer and saner, and unseen possibilities may slowly start to bubble to the surface’.
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The Labour Party’s 2024 general election manifesto can be found here.
