Today, Sir Keir Starmer unveiled the Labour manifesto in Manchester, ahead of the UK’s General Election due to take place on Thursday 4 July. The Labour party is currently tipped to win, with a 26-point lead in the polls.
In a large conference hall in Manchester, the launch was opened by Labour’s Deputy leader Angela Rayner. This was followed by speeches from Labour voters who gave accounts about how they had been affected by Tory rule, discussing the housing crisis and NHS waiting lists.
There were no surprises or new policies that had yet to be announced in the past 18 months nor in the last few weeks of campaigning. Starmer called Labour "the party of wealth creation" and described the document a "mandate for economic growth".
Experts from across City, University of London react to the manifesto.
‘A populist demand’: expert slams Labour 13k more police pledge
Dr Lambros Fatsis, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at City, researches police racism and the criminalisation of Black-Afrodiasporic music. He said:
Labour restated its pledge to put 13,000 neighbourhood police and community support offices back on the beat by the end of a five-year parliament.
This is a populist demand that every party makes and is not a serious solution to end violence. Corbyn promised even fewer and the Conservatives more in the last election.
It is tone-deaf to increase the number of police officers after the Met was once again declared institutionally racist, sexist and misogynistic.
Policing has little to do with crime but everything to do with order maintenance.
Public safety could be achieved through non-punitive measures, with an increase in welfare, social equality and justice.
Expect dissent from political extremes after a Labour supermajority
Professor Dan Mercea is a Professor of Digital and Social Change at City and researches protest, democracy and civic participation. He said:
If Labour wins a supermajority, dissenting voices will manifest at the extremes of the political spectrum.
Current poll numbers suggest that the Conservatives will likely be routed. Such a result will cause in-fighting within the party, notably with its far-right faction.
Whether Reform wins any seats or not is immaterial to what happens next with the Conservatives. There is a chance that Reform will agitate to push the two parties close into alignment.
In time, if the Conservatives embrace Farage, there will be vociferous dissent from whatever Tory centrists will still be left in the party.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is a question of how well the Greens might do. Projections are reasonably positive for the Green party – unlike their peers in the most recent European Union elections.
An internal opposition inside Labour can only grow following a win. After a victory, the furthest Left of the party will mobilise to make their voices heard, more so along other civil society actors such as allies in the Trade Union movement.
Communities struggling with violence, theft and antisocial behaviour will welcome Labour’s increased investment in police officers and return to neighbourhood policing models.
The Section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 allowed thieves to steal with relative impunity so long as they stay below a £200 threshold – so we would like to see this repealed by Labour.
The standalone offence for crime against shop workers will help change the narrative that retail crime is somehow victimless.
Prolific local offenders are often drug-affected and approach shop theft as a full-time job. They know the laws and police resource limitations and will use them to their advantage.
The proposed legislation is symbolic but it will send a strong message about the severity of assaulting a shopworker and encourage people to report to the police.
Shoplifting and violence against shopworkers is a serious issue: the British Retail Consortium’s latest survey found retail crime surged by 50 per cent, with 16.7 million incidents last year.
Asylum pledge "extremely disappointing" refashioning of Tory policy
Dr Maya Goodfellow is a Presidential Fellow at City and researches race, migration and capital. She is the author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats. She said:
Many will be extremely disappointed to see Labour refuse to open up safe routes of travel, one of the only viable ways to ensure people don't have to make incredibly dangerous journeys across the Channel.
Instead, they are simply refashioning the government's Small Boats Operational Command, which seems to be more of the same, and doesn't provide the support or safety that's needed for people seeking asylum.
Delay improvements to public services or accept big cuts
Professor Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow at City. He has expertise in business and finance journalism, said:
The Labour Manifesto contains no surprises on the fiscal side, with only moderate spending plans financed by a few tax rises and some borrowing – although the savings from cracking down on tax avoidance may be illusory.
But the real test, if Labour wins the election, will come when Rachel Reeves carries out her spending review.
Labour will then have to choose whether to delay improvements to public services until the economy improves, add some additional revenue-raising measures , or accept big cuts to unprotected public services.
No more trees to plant on an extinct earth
Dr Rebecca Tamás is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at City. She is also the Co-Organiser of 'Degrowth Futures' and an environmental writer. She said:
There will be no more trees to plant on an extinct earth.
It's great to see Labour committing to a Tree Planting Taskforce, as planting trees is a crucial way of combatting Co2 rises.
However, Labour's commitment to green actions like this directly clash with their commitment to 'Sustained economic growth' - because infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet.
To really combat the climate crisis, and avoid disaster in the very near future, Labour needs to think about ways to move away from endless growth, and towards a more balanced economy and society.
Labour manifesto uses language of securonomics, but how will it fund investment in public sector?
Dr Lise Butler is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at City. She has expertise in political history with a focus on leftwing politics. She said:
The Labour manifesto continues the successful strategy we have seen in Starmer’s speeches over the past few years – emphasising that Labour is the party of stability and good management in contrast to Tory chaos.
This approach has been broadly effective at repositioning Labour as trustworthy, and the manifesto, overall, contributes to making this case.
But there are questions to be asked about whether Labour is promising enough investment to restore the integrity of government and the public sector.
The manifesto’s language of ‘securonomics’ and ‘mission driven industrial strategy’ echoes the positive attitude towards state planning and partnership with business and unions that characterised both Labour and Conservative governments from the 1950s to the 1970s.
It promises new institutions, programmes, and regulators – such as a new Border Security Command to curb illegal migration, a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee and Young Futures programme, a new independent Ethics and Integrity Commission to monitor government ethics, and a new Clean Power Alliance, an international coalition of countries for climate action.
While many of these promised institutions will be welcomed and may contribute to restoring trust in government, the manifesto, overall, promises more regulation than investment.
There is a lot of rhetoric about increasing economic growth but not much detail. If there were a cost free way of achieving higher rates of sustained economic growth, the UK and other developed countries would have adopted it by now.
In the short term, higher rates of growth can be achieved by reducing the tax on capital - which they have ruled out - but even that does not achieve sustained growth in the long-run.
There is some evidence that investments in research and development can produce higher growth over the long term, but the manifesto seems more focused on industrial policy - giving preferential treatment to particular industries.
One must ask what future Labour Ministers or Civil Servants know about the viability of different businesses that prior investors who often have specialist knowledge and a personal financial stake in success do not.
One positive note is the promise to reform planning, though even here the impression is not just to get rid of barriers but to impose new mandates - particularly regarding affordable housing.
How will the government force local councils to override the wishes of their own electorates and build more? No mechanism is mentioned.
Professor Ian Pace is a Professor of Music, Culture and Society at City and a pianist. He said:
These are critical times for the arts, and major arts institutions are at risk, especially opera companies.
The costs of the arts are not great compared to other areas of government expenditure. I hope Labour will ensure their proper support, especially to arts not primarily driven by commerce. The idea of arts as a wider public good needs to return, despite all the attacks on it from right and left.
Artists are increasingly from wealthier backgrounds - because of lack of proper support for arts provision in state education. Labour needs to ensure not only the privately educated receive full exposure to and training in the arts.
Many artists are self-employed, and many smaller artistic institutions are unable to pay them the sorts of fees they need, because the institutions receive insufficient public money. It is shocking to see how little many performing artists earn (often just £10-20K per year), which discourages those without independent means from entering these fields.
The National Music Network is a good initiative, but I hope this will involve exposing young people to music they might not encounter by other means. Labour needs to look at appointments to bodies supporting the arts, to ensure the presence of artists and those well familiar with the sectors, rather than just managers.
I’m very glad to hear about Labour’s plans to support children studying creative subjects, after these have been dismissed by other politicians before.
As well as giving protections to the self-employed, there need to be further measures to help financially support those pursuing precarious artistic careers.
All quotes can be attributed to respective academics at City, University of London. For more information, please contact the City Press Office.
