There seems little point in reviewing all of the manifestos as most people by now have made up their minds. Instead I want to address a question I heard a few times.
“Labour and Tory are they both the same”?
Instinctively the answer is no.. Politics has become incredibly polarised and the gap between Labour and the Conservatives is bigger than I can ever remember. Much bigger than 2017 and 2019. But I still see plenty of people making this claim on social media.
Even 20 years ago you could find centrist Labour MPs and One Nation Tories who could agree what needed to be done, even if they disagreed how to get there. Those days are long gone, the Johnson and Corbyn eras purged their respective parties of moderates. Labour are trying to address that with the current round of candidate selection, while the Conservatives are doubling down with an even more extreme set of PPCs.
The widening gap is mainly because the Conservatives have moved further and further to the right, spooked by Farage, making crazy policy claims which they never had any chance of delivering. Labour have zig zagged over the last 14 years moving to the left on some issues, to the right on others, often moving back again. On tax and spending, for example, Labour 2024 are proposing much higher levels of tax and spending than 2015, 2017 or 2019. The last times we saw tax and spending this high from Labour was Attlee pre-1950 or Blair post-2000.
The most objective way to measure how close the 2 parties are is to measure the financial gap between them – how much they plan to spend on public services for example, and then going back over the last few General Elections to see if the gap is growing or shrinking.
Picking your way through the respective manifestos since 2017 isn’t that easy, partly because different parties represent their numbers in different ways, but also because the Conservatives have taken down the financial documents for their last 2 manifestos and replaced it with a warning of Labour tax rises. Labour helpfully published full sets of figures for their manifestos, but in 2019 added additional uncosted spending commitments during the campaign.
Instead I have relied on my own analysis, plus the Resolution Foundation and Institute for Fiscal Studies.
In 2017 both parties presented relatively austere budgets, in that both followed George Osborne’s commitment to running a primary budget surplus over the course of the parliament, and reducing overall Government debt. Labour planned to raise an extra £48bn in taxes, but increase spending by only £28bn, leaving £20bn to reduce the deficit. The Conservatives planned to cut spending and taxes by c. £15bn with no overall increase in public spending.
Both parties offered a fiscally regressive manifesto – the gap between the poorest and the rest would get bigger. In the case of the Conservatives it was because their spending cuts would hit the poorest. For Labour it was because their big spending commitments disproportionally favoured those better off – lifting the means cap on social care and ending tuition fees, for example. Both parties also campaigned for relatively low levels of tax and spend compared to the New Labour years.
In 2019 both parties offered expansionary manifestos with higher levels of tax and the promise of more spending. The Conservatives offered a modest increase in spending £2.9bn. Labour offered a whopping £82.9bn, although this excludes uncosted commitments made during the campaign. Again both manifestos were fiscally regressive, the gap between the poorest and the rest of us would get bigger.
In 2024 the 2 parties are going in totally different directions.
The Conservatives are offering cuts to Government spending of £33bn, with the money used to increase defence spending, but mostly tax cuts of c. £28bn.
Labour are planning on increasing spending, at a time when Government spending is already at a record level. They are proposing the highest level of Government Spending as a %tage of GDP since 1950. The initial increase is fairly modest – only £11bn, paid for by changes to tax rules for the very rich. You can add to that a further £17.5bn in borrowing to fund Green investment, and the gap between the parties is greater than 2017, not as great as 2019. It is also a fiscally progressive budget that would reduce the gap between the poorest and rest of us. The main thrust of the budget is fiscal prudence, even extending to promising to have the deficit falling by the end of the Parliament (a nod to austerity). The commitment to growth and wealth creation seems to be enough to silence of howls of anguish from the rich for their increased taxes.
The fiscal gap between Labour and Conservative is greater than 2017, smaller than 2019 in tems of additional spending, however both are starting from baseline levels of tax and spending way higher than either election.
But within that is the promise of much greater riches for Government spending. At the moment the UK spends £120bn a year paying interest on Government debt. Partly that is the consequence of the increase in Government debt during Covid, but also due to the panic in financial markets caused by Liz Truss. If markets trust the Government those interest rates come down, and the amount available to invest in public services goes up hugely. Returning Government interest costs to the level when Labour left power would release a staggering £80bn. They will need it if they are to make good their manifesto promises to NHS workforce and cutting waiting times.
So if the gap is huge why do so many people insist that the parties are essentially the same?
Partly this is factional – there is a left wing faction that insists that they alone hold the true flame of socialism and that anyone else is a sell out red Tory. There is a mirror image right wing faction that believe that they hold the true flame of Brexit and everyone else is a closet leftie. Or woke, which is worse, apparently.
The gap between the 2 parties on the economy is vast, not just in numbers, but in the direction. In 2015 and 2017 Labour and Conservative presented different answers to similar problems; austerity in 2015, expansion in 2017. In 2024 the 2 parties are heading in completely different directions.
But this is in’t enough to explain why people think that both parties are the same?
Labour may not have any Conservative polices but they do sound Conservative. Their priorities; wealth creation, economic growth, fiscal prudence, investment in defence, sound Tory. The seats Labour need to win to form a Government are older, less diverse , have fewer graduates and have higher levels of home ownership than the seats they currently hold. Labour have changed how they communicate to voters to reflect that.
One of the things that has struck me most over the last 14 years is how much language matters. The way that party members talk among themselves is radically different to how the rest of society talks about politics. Truss and Corbyn both had the gift of talking in language that made party members and activists feel like they were one of them. Both equally struggled when trying to communicate with the wider electorate.
Labour have got much better at communications, but in doing so they sound less sincere to the kind of middle class graduate who has become a big chunk of their support. They are much less tribal and go out of their way to avoid the cliches of tribalism. And some people will mistrust them for that, because that tribalism is part of their political identity.
But mostly importantly they are aiming to reassure financial markets that the madness of Johnson, Truss and Sunak is over, interest rates can come down, and paying more taxes is a reasonable price to pay for economic stablility.
If they can make that work in Government the next few years will be very different to the last 14.
https://labour.org.uk/change/my-plan-for-change
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/conservative-manifesto-initial-response
https://www.ftadviser.com/Articles/2017/05/26/FTAmanifestrmw26517
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/general-election-2017-manifesto-analysis-tax-and-benefit-policies
For some reason I can’t like the Resolution Foundation, but if you want to follow them these are the references:
