On the face of it, my Father would have struck many people as being a typical Labour voter. For most of his life, he lived in council houses or flats. He had a series of insecure, not very well paid jobs, and for many years he had to scrimp, save, and make do just to make ends meet. He would have been a prime candidate to be labelled one of the JAM's (just about managing), as six million families in Britain on middle to low incomes have now been dubbed, and he certainly would have been one of the "many, not the few," at whom the Labour Party have aimed their manifesto for the upcoming election. Yet despite that, he usually voted Conservative. And he did so because he said that he was generally better off under the Tories than under a Labour government.
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| Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour's manifesto. |
After last year's EU referendum, Leave voters in general - and the older ones in particular - were dubbed stubborn, selfish, or just plain stupid, for having voted the way they did, for not considering future generations, who, said the Remain enthusiasts, had the most to lose from Brexit. The implication was that for some people, altruism ought to be the main driver in determining where to put your cross on the ballot paper. But altruism doesn't pay the rent or put food on the table - it is difficult to selflessly vote for 'jam tomorrow' - particularly a tomorrow you aren't going to see - when you already lack bread on which to put this hypothetical jam. (Enough! Stop torturing that poor metaphor! - Ed.)
So, if he were still alive, would my Dad vote Labour this year? From a cursory glance at the key election pledges in the party's manifesto, there are some things he probably would have admired. Guaranteeing the so-called 'triple lock' on pensions, increasing the minimum wage, doing away with zero-hours contracts, abolishing tuition fees, increased funding for the NHS, building one million new homes, recruiting ten thousand more police officers - all measures against which it would be churlish to argue. The creation of the NHS was one of this country's greatest achievements, and preserving it remains critical to the well-being of this nation, but while the Labour party maintain that the NHS is not safe in Tory hands, the Labour party have not always covered themselves in glory in their management of it either. Tony Blair's famed 1997 claim that there were "24 hours to save the NHS" clearly did not work out too well, and it's no use solely blaming the Tories for the current state of the NHS considering that Labour were in power for the majority of the period since.
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| Tony Blair's efforts to save the NHS were not entirely well received. |
And who would argue against the idea of ten-thousand extra policemen? Not me, for one. As long as Diane Abbott is nowhere near the implementation of such a plan - especially the budgeting. Abbott's cringe-making radio appearance in which she 'misspoke' and initially claimed that the cost of such an increase in police numbers would be £30 per head, per year, has been matched by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell being unable to quote the figure for the national deficit and Shadow Education spokeswoman Angela Rayner unable to say how many primary school pupils would benefit from Labour's proposed reduction in class sizes. It bodes ill that three potential cabinet ministers in a possible Labour administration are so poorly briefed on their specialist subjects.
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| John McDonnell's inexact grasp of the size of the national deficit would fill few with any confidence about his suitability to be Chancellor. |
Capping energy bills - first proposed by then Labour leader Ed Miliband at the last election - gets another airing, and is such a universally popular scheme that the Tories seem likely to appropriate it for their own manifesto. Capping energy bills is clearly easier if the energy providers are brought back into public ownership, as Labour propose doing with the creation of at least one publicly owned energy company in every region of the UK. But - and this is a question that surfaces time and again when looking at Labour's pledges - where is the money coming from?
The money would, it seems, come chiefly from increasing tax - 'tax and spend' being a way of life with Labour - and so we see proposals to increase income tax to 45p for anyone earning over £80,000 and 50p for those whose incomes exceed £123,000. Presumably, anyone on £123,000 would be deemed wealthy enough to afford such an increase, although oddly enough Jeremy Corbyn (annual salary £137,000) claimed, in an ITV interview, that he is not wealthy. Further income would be generated by a levy on what Labour call 'excessive' salaries - 2.5% on earnings over £330,000 and 5% on those over £500,000. And then there is the proposed 20:1 limit on the gap between the lowest and highest paid workers in companies given Government contracts.[1] In fairness, if that does come to pass, one hopes that a Labour administration would lead by example and immediately implement this policy in national and local government, and in all nationalised industries.
Meanwhile, Labour propose that corporation tax be increased to 26%, predicting a £19.4billion increase in revenue, and that further revenue would be generated from giving HMRC extra powers to chase individuals and corporations who avoid tax, a measure which all of us who have no choice but to pay our fair whack through PAYE would applaud.
There are, however a few problems. Whatever latter day equivalent of a fag packet that Labour's income and expenditure calculations were scrawled on is as likely to be as reliable as those of previous administrations, that is to say, the result of much guesswork and over-optimism. It might be fully costed, but can it be fully funded? Time will tell (well, it might depending on the outcome of 8th June), but their pledge to renationalise the railways as existing franchises expire (probably just as well we voted for Brexit, as this would be so much more difficult if we remained in the EU) and bring energy and water companies into public ownership would be hideously expensive. Those of us who remember the nationalised railways, which were chronically underfunded, inefficient, and beset with labour-relation issues, would suggest that the belief that renationalisation would be an improvement is a triumph of hope over experience. Labour's proposed strengthening of trade union power also suggests a return to the days when industrial action on the railways was often more regular than the trains themselves.
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| A common sight for commuters on strike-hit Southern Rail. Coming to a station near you soon, in the event of a Labour victory on 8th June. |
The further left in the Labour party you go - to the point where people can only see the Conservatives as 'the nasty party,' and cannot utter the word 'Tory' without the suffix, 'scum' - this manifesto is presumably being greeted with great enthusiasm. For the more moderate, comparisons with Michael Foot's 1983 election manifesto - dubbed 'the longest suicide note in history' - abound.[2] For anyone to the right of Labour, it does nothing to stop perpetuating the belief that Labour policy is driven by spite and envy, that raising standards for the underprivileged must always be accompanied by penalising the well off - as Gore Vidal said, " It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."
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| New hope? No hope! |
Many people will see the Labour manifesto as proof that come June 8th, Theresa May will be returned to power and with a significantly increased majority. But as Brexit and Trump have proved, the polls are not to be trusted. A Corbyn victory would complete an unlikely - but not impossible - hat-trick. I still don't think that my Dad would vote Labour, though.
[1] Charles Woodburn, chief executive of BAE systems, who have many government contracts, has a basic salary of £875,000 - with bonuses etc, his pay is said to be in the region of £3million per annum. To comply with Labour's proposal, the minimum salary within BAE would need to be £150,000, or else Mr Woodburn would need to take a pay cut of around £2.5million based on the current average UK annual salary of £27,600
[2] Interestingly, apart from calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher personal taxation for the rich, , abolition of the House of Lords, and the re-nationalisation of recently privatised industries like British Telecom, British Aerospace, and the British Shipbuilders Corporation, the 1983 Labour manifesto also called for withdrawal from the EU, or European Economic Community (EEC) as it was then known.
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