The Labour Manifesto comes in at a chunky 105 pages.
Here’s what you need to know.
The first part of the manifesto - titled ‘Time For Real Change’
can be summarised in three words: investment, investment, investment.
And the sums are pretty big.
Labour will set up a 400 billion pound National Transformation Fund to rebuild Britain’s
infrastructure. Of this - 250 billion is earmarked for a green
industrial revolution, transforming our energy supplies and insulating
our homes.
On top of this Labour will set up a national investment bank
which will lend up to 250 billion pounds for enterprise and innovation.
It’s hoped this will tackle regional inequality in Britain
- which - after 40 years of free market economic policies - is the worst
in Europe. Next - on public services and benefits
Labour have promised to reverse the damage done by the Tories and Lib Dems.
“The NHS has been destroyed, it’s been destroyed”
That means Labour will scrap universal credit - which has left thousands destitute.
“You’re taking £439 how is that supposed to work!”
They’ll also scrap work capability assessments
- which have sanctioned the severely disabled and terminally ill.
“I want them not to have their money taken away from them,
and being crippled. The fat cats keep the money and us lot get nothing!”
On the NHS - Labour will invest 26 billion pounds a year
on training new doctors and nurses, and on hospital upgrades -
a sharp contrast to 9 years of squeezed NHS budgets,
which have seen waiting lists soar.
As well as reversing cuts, Labour will bring new areas of life into the
public sphere. Here - its Labour’s promise to roll-out
free fibre optic broadband which has generated the most headlines
- though the offer for free personal care for over 65s,
and of six years of free adult education, could prove just as revolutionary.
On Europe - the manifesto doesn’t contain many surprises.
Labour will negotiate a soft brexit deal which protects jobs,
the NHS and the environment, and then hold a referendum where it is put
against the option of remaining in the EU. On other political questions, the manifesto
is more radical.
Labour promise to extend the franchise to all residents regardless of whether they
are UK citizens. and they’ll lower the voting age to 16.
They also have plans to clean up politics in Westminster.
The key offer here is to ban MPs from holding second jobs.
That means the likes of John Redwood will have to leave their private equity firms
- and live solely off their £80k MP salaries - which, as will be etched into all of our
minds by end of this election,
already puts them among the country’s richest 5%.
These are just some of the key policies in Labour’s manifesto for 21st century Britain
- I haven’t even mentioned scrapping tuition fees,
building half a million council houses or granting everyone free prescriptions.
But whilst to find out the full details of Labour’s platform
you’ll have to check out the text itself - it’s worth noting here that manifestoes
aren’t just a series of promises and plans, but also the drawing of battle lines in a
general election.
And the response to Labour’s manifesto has already shown the powers that be are up
for a fight. So - what are the arguments generated by this
document that will dominate the final days of this
general election?
First - I’d put my money on costs taking centre stage.
That’s because, it doesn’t take a brain scientist
to work out Labour’s plans are pretty expensive.
Labour say they can pay for it with taxes on the top 5% of earners and on big businesses,
as well as by borrowing to invest.
The second argument will be about capitalism. The Tories like to pitch Corbyn as a Marxist
extremist who wants to turn Britain into Venezuela
- and it is true this manifesto increases the size of the state.
But here we need some perspective. Yes, the manifesto would increase overall
spending levels as well as the size of the public sector.
But whilst the state would be large by British standards,
it would still be smaller as a proportion of GDP
than in France, Belgium and all of Scandinavia.
So critics of Labour’s manifesto must answer this simple question:
Why shouldn’t Britons be as well-educated, as healthy and as happy
as the French, the Belgians and the Finns.