The 2024 Labour Manifesto is now online!
I am genuinely excited by loads of it, especially the green policies and the expansion of workers’ rights, but probably the most important part of it is the stuff aimed at economic growth.
What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Inspired to volunteer? Some more sensible, moderate emotion?
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From what I’ve seen following the BBC reporting and a bit of others reactions is seems ok. I think some people will be disappointed that there’s nothing ground breaking or revolutionary like the Greens manifesto, but personally I’m fine with it.
The railways, net zero, and bringing back the 2030 petrol and diesel ban back are the bits that I think will get overlooked but are great policies.
It is basically a matter of saying we do need big change, but we need to be careful when going about it. Which is not a bad balance to strike, IMO.
It’s possible that they might just be going for a broad-appeal manifesto to make sure they get in, and then plan to introduce the more radical stuff further down the line.
But also it is Kier Starmer and Labour, so it’s equally possible they’ll do bugger all and/or kick themselves directly in the dick when they have an open goal at the last possible second.
Time will tell, I suppose.
Largely sensible, moderate emotion here. It’s a fine, sensible, rational manifesto that fosters cautious optimism, because I do think there are some really good policies in there, especially the expansion of workers’ rights. I felt the Lib Dem manifesto was more inspiring, without diving wholly into the realms of fantasy like the Greens’ manifesto, but as a general statement of intent, Labour are convincingly going to be an improvement on the Tories.
I read this Labour manifesto and I think they are targeting the right issues, but I don’t agree with their proposed solutions.
On the NHS it’s talking about how they will “harness the power of technologies like AI to transform the speed and accuracy of diagnostic services” but I’d rather we just had enough doctors to make diagnoses and not have another failed IT project.
On energy they’re talking about Hinckley Point C, Sizewell C and small reactors. That’s a retrograde step in my opinion. Nuclear is the most expensive energy source and they’re trying to bring energy prices down?
The economy section has “£1 billion to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture” which is a bullshit technology that has no proven record of working and just allows fossil fuels to continue operation. This one is probably a double whammy because I suspect it’s the backbone of their zero-carbon electricy plan for 2030.
There’s policies which haven’t been thought through all through this. Yes, it’s better than the Tories because the intent is right, but I’m not excited by this. In fact I worry that this will be a government of failed policies because they’ll be wasting money on ideas that won’t work.
The one thing that makes me optimistic that they wouldn’t persist in wasting money on things that won’t work is Starmer doesn’t strike me as a man that would do that. He’s just not that ideological. My sense of him as a person is that he’s someone that will look at a problem, listen to all the evidence, and then reach a conclusion upon which he bases his course of action. Any idea that can’t be proven to work will be jettisoned. I also strongly suspect that he hasn’t 100% decided what he’s going to do as prime minister, because he hasn’t got all the information yet.
So I’m reading the manifesto primarily as a statement of intent that outlines the general direction Labour would like to take the country, with specifics to be worked out later once Starmer has had a couple of weeks to stare at the problem in more detail.
There is no way this Labour government is going to be revolutionary, because that’s not who Starmer is. But a slow and steady, evidence-driven amble in the right direction seems likely.
I think that’s how manifestos should be read - as a statement of intent, but we all know that manifesto pledges are held as unbreakable vows. I mean, look at the LibDems still suffering the fallout over things said in a manifesto 14 years ago. They didn’t even win the election to be able to act on it.
They also haven’t got long to try multiple things. Take the carbon zero electricity by 2030 pledge. Our carbon per kWh has been dropping for a long time, but not at a rate that gets to zero in 2030. That’s just 5.5 years. Hinckley Point C might come online in that time frame, but Sizewell C would take 10 years minimum. So it’s not about replacing the gas power stations with nuclear. It’s about going all in on carbon capture, solar and wind from day 1 to get anywhere near in just 5 years.
I pick that example because I feel I understand the domain, but I’m sure there’s other examples. Trying a bad plan and realising it’s failing takes time. Starting with a better plan is faster.
I’m not sure they would even start with a bad plan. Starmer seems like the kind of person who would look at whether a plan is good or bad before even starting it.
I would anticipate a massive amount of both offshore and onshore wind farms - we know those work, and with onshore wind farms in particular, we know they’re pretty quick and cheap to get up and running (I recall reading a while back that it’s possible to get an onshore wind farm built and producing electricity in less than 12 months), and the main barrier to them has been all the old people being all NIMBY about it. Just having a blanket ban on “but it spoils my view!” as a valid objection to planning permission would do so much good.
“Labour will also remove the discriminatory age bands, so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage, delivering a pay rise to hundreds of thousands of workers across the UK.”
I like this change, shame it wasn’t in place when I was younger!
My concern with this is that for a lot of young people retail is their first job, and so I suspect retail is predominantly young workers. What kind of impact would this have on the economy? E.g. if Morrisons hires lots of younger people and they now need to increase all their pays, I’m guessing they’ll need to cut staff numbers or increase prices? Of course they are going to avoid cutting into their profits. Now times this by however many retailers there are. I can only guess there is the hope that people will buy more.
This was also a concern when the minimum wage was introduced, but it never materialised. Hopefully that will be the case this time, too, but I suppose we’ll have to see.
As someone who works in Morrisons this wouldn’t actually be the case. They pay everyone the highest level of minimum wage already so this wouldn’t be a change. I know they aren’t the only company that pays everyone the 21+ minimum wage
Another potential problem with this policy is that it could end up leading to fewer younger people being taken on in these sort of roles.
If they’ve got to pay them the same amount as someone who is more experienced and would require less training, why would they opt for hiring the younger ones? This is partly the reason the policy is what it is now.
That’s an interesting take on “Young people won’t be exploited as much”.
privacy and human rights? rights of humans on the internet? what does it have regarding that?
Nothing
Most people in the UK government regardless of their party don’t give 2 shits about online privacy. Remember KOSA?
There are also much bigger issues at the moment IMO
what’s wild is that i see all this stuff about making more appointments and reducing wait times for the nhs but nothing about paying staff and doctors more or allowing free movement in the eu to encourage more doctors to come work at the nhs.
so i’m assuming that “modernizing the nhs” means giving more control over to american healthcare corps.
No mention of anything related to reducing reliance on cars and investing in public transport and micro mobility or something of the sort? A major area of climate goals completely missing.
Yeah, it is kind of disappointing to see all the pro-car stuff. In the section on Transport, they do mention trains and buses, too, but I’m not sure cycling comes up at all. Obviously they’re trying to counter the dumb Tory anti-ULEZ stuff, but it’d be nice to see something that wasn’t a defensive crouch sometimes.
One thing that I am really disappointed by is the lack of any meaningful reform to gender recognition. Like they pay lip service but they still want to keep the requirement for a medical diagnosis and they don’t want to recognise non-binary people. I don’t love the term red Tory because I think it’s inaccurate but to me this is one are where Labour are closer to the Tory party than they are to other left wing parties
I would be happier with the requirement for a medical diagnosis if getting one took 18 weeks rather than 5-10 years, and didn’t involve making adults jump through hoops to prove they’re “trans enough” to be diagnosed. Like I get the need to be cautious when it comes to diagnosing children, but for adults, especially those over 30, there is zero need to spend so much time making sure they definitely know what they want.
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They said gender recognition
