LibDem Manifesto 2024

 Manifesto season is here, kicked off by a 117 page beast from the Liberal Democrats 'For a Fair Deal' accompanied by a separate costings document. 

What's In It?

A lot, there are 20 separate policy areas, each with dozens of policies and pledges. Health alone has 76 separate policies and actions that the LibDems want to implement. 

The key message is that 'everything is broken', so "We must transform the very nature of British politics itself, so that we can fix the health and care crisis, get our economy back on track, end the appalling sewage scandal, and give people the fair deal they deserve." Key pledges include

• A home insulation programme to bring down energy bills and carbon footprint
• More flexible and generous parental leave
• Rejoining the single European market
• Recruiting/retaining 8,000 extra GPs, with a new right to see a GP within 7 days (or 24 hours if urgent), and ending 'dental deserts'. 
• Expand free school meals for children in poverty
• Increased investment in renewables, backed up by changes in planning law, aiming for 90% of energy to come from renewables by 2030, aiming for net zero by 2045. 
• Proportional representation in all elections. 
• Investing extra money in HMRC to crack down on tax avoidance, (one of their key fundraisers)
• Higher tax on big banks, big tech and energy companies, lower personal taxation by raising thresholds. 
• Restore international development spending to 0.7% of national income
• A thorough reform of mental health services, with increased access, mental health professionals in every school, CAMS to run up to 25. 
• Boosting the care sector - higher minimum wage for the sector, higher recognition, rights and financial support for unpaid carers. 
• Scrap 'free schools', give extra free nursery hours to 3-4 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds, triple the early years pupil premium, extend free school meals to all children in poverty. 
• Cracking down on sewage dumping, through taxation, new laws and quality standards. 
• More safe and legal routes for asylum. 
• And much much more. 

What's To Like?

This is a proper manifesto, a programme for government, something the Conservatives have lacked for several years, and which (if the rumours are true) Labour doesn't have for the next few years. There is a clear focus on helping the vulnerable - children in poverty, new parents, the lonely, carers, supporting mental health. There is some support for families in the new parental leave arrangements and extra support in nurseries and schools for children in poverty. The environmental targets are ambitious, but this looks like a party which takes climate change seriously, as well as our responsibility to the wider world with the 0.7% aid pledge. This looks like a party which cares about the right things (mostly) and has lots of ideas about how to fix them. 

There is plenty here to support - I wonder if the Libdems are playing the long game. During the Coalition years of 2010-15, most of the most popular and impactful policies (pupil premium, raising the lower tax thresholds, equal marriage) originally came from the Libdems. Given that Labour seem determined to have as few policies as possible, the Libdems will be hoping to see much of their manifesto become law, even if its enacted by another party. 

What's Not to Like? 

Size isn't everything. Some sections of this are highly focused, some aren't. The Defence section is a case in point, it opens Keeping our country secure should be the first priority of any government. On page 105. In section 21 of the document. So not your first priority then. It makes all the right noises but what does 'secure a fair deal for service personnel and veterans' actually mean? How is 'having an ambition to spend at least 2.5% on defence' a policy. Will you or won't you? Many of the bullet points in the document are aspirational, with no clear actions, outcomes, or measurable goals. 

There are a lot of state solutions here. Many of the policies will involve additional laws, standards, targets, quangoes and government bodies. Police and Crime Commissioners will be scrapped, but otherwise the traffic is all the other way. This manifesto will lead to a more regulated society with more state interference, and more bureaucracy and waste spent on chasing targets. 

Investing in more mental health support is great, supporting the decriminalisation of cannabis isn't, that will create more mental health problems in the long run. 

There's no recognition of the hideous cost of family breakdown, both personally and economically. To be fair to Ed Davey, I don't expect any party to address this. But its the root cause of a whole slew of other problems - low educational attainment, mental illness, criminality, economic cost, even the housing market (couples who stay together need 1 property, couples who don't need 2). 

Self-id for gender recognition, and legal recognition of 'non-binary genders' (?) will add even more confusion into a confused area. 'Ensure access to high quality reproductive healthcare' sounds like taking the side of the abortion industry, rather than asking whether 250.000 abortions per year is too high. And I don't think trying to export abortion around the world is something commendable. (Its ironic that liberal/left voices decry the colonialism of the past, whilst still assuming that Western values are superior and wanting to export them around the world to the benighted savages who don't see things as we do.)

There is no wrestling with the downside of immigration, and the pressure it puts on infrastructure and social cohesion. Yes we need immigration of working age people, as the birth rate of 'native' Britons is below the replacement rate (another issue that no party seems prepared to address). But 1.4m in the last 2 years is unsustainably high. If the centre/left parties don't even recognise this, they leave a void for more strident voices to fill. 

The costings document amounts to less than 2 sides of A4 of actual figures. I've had to produce more detailed work applying for grants of £20k for my local church. This is not 'fully costed'. 

Time permitting, reviews of other manifestoes will follow!