Events | 2010.04.19
Blair-plus? Hardly. This is a bold, persuasive manifesto | Polly Toynbee
No extravagance, and no bombast. But Labour has reminded voters in the starkest terms of the crucial choice they face
There was no hold-the-front-page show-stopper, but how could there be? Extravagance is not the pitch for a manifesto in the depth of recession. Our poll today suggests that Cameron\'s party trick, pulling funny money tax cuts from his top hat, has not been greeted with the expected public applause.
The tone of Labour\'s manifesto launch was sober and pleasingly hyperbole free. Gordon Brown thumped no tubs, with none of that "world class, world-beating" bombast that belongs back in the old "no more boom and bust" days. Turn to the back of the document and there are 50 mostly decent things that Labour would do and the Conservatives would not. Dig deeper for details, and there are rich pickings for social democrats. Anyone who has ever voted Labour will find plentiful reminders here of good reasons why. Labour is where it is, and its past for both better and worse cannot be rewritten – but a vision of the future can be mapped out.
As ever, voters face a stark choice: how would a Cameron government be better than the plans laid out here? A few electors can choose Lib Dem without wasting their vote – but most people will face the monstrously relentless first-past-the-post Labour or Conservative stranglehold with no escape except to futile escapism.
Let\'s take constitutional reform first, a crucial manifesto difference between the two main parties. Unequivocally, with no weasel words promising a review, Labour is committed to a referendum on electoral reform with a vote on an elected House of Lords next year. Once we get electoral reform, no one need face an election like this again. In future, votes for other parties would not be wasted. Both Labour and Tories should split once the electoral system makes it feasible, allowing left and right within each an honest view without this crush in the middle ground. Coalitions of the future would better reflect the true balance of national opinion. Scaremongering in the City warns that a hung parliament and coalition government would endanger creditworthiness: but how about coalitions in Switzerland, Germany, Austria or New Zealand? Coalition would be a radical culture change – but it produces better government.
Why believe Labour when it has ratted on voting reform three times? This time it\'s a pledge with a date; this time a cabinet majority demands it; and this time even Gordon Brown, the road block of the past, is convinced. Above all, this time, in the event that Labour is the biggest party, it would need the Lib Dems – who would demand a referendum on real proportional representation in exchange for their support.
The Lib Dems would do Labour a dose of good on fair tax, too. In a sorry reprise of the past, the worst of today\'s manifesto was a promise not to raise income tax . Indeed, Brown has cut the basic rate by 3p, while raising less fair taxes: half a million people have still lost out from his abolition of the 10p rate. Labour remains hopelessly apologetic about its new 50p top rate: "It\'s not ideological, you understand," Alistair Darling hastens to say.
Over the years, that repeated pledge not to raise income tax obliged Labour to borrow too much without taxing enough to cover their spending. It caused the rich to pay less tax than the poor. In the bad old Blair-Brown feuding days, Brown\'s people pretended their man had fought tooth and claw to keep that income tax pledge out of the three previous manifestos. But here it is again, matched by no such pledge on VAT, a far less fair tax. A civil partnership with the Lib Dems would bring in Clegg and Cable\'s big idea – taking 3.5 million earners under £10,000 out of income tax. But living in terror of another Tory "double whammy" attack on tax, Labour has retreated, as Mandelson has been strutting the studios to proclaim a "Blair-plus" manifesto .
But aside from tax phobia, it isn\'t. A living wage of £7.60 for all government employees and all contracted-out workers will see, for example, the mother and daughter I wrote about last week – who clean Darling\'s Treasury office for a pittance – getting a London wage they can survive on. It sets a benchmark for other employers. Pegging the national minimum wage to earnings so it never again falls back is progress. Outrageous interest from doorstep loan sharks will be capped. A levy on banks will launch new credit unions. Legal and tax barriers will be removed to make it easier to create new John Lewis-style mutuals with employee buyouts of public companies. A shake-up in the City obliges two-thirds of shareholders to agree to a company takeover, while a £4bn private fund will invest in green industries.
The public services agenda is definitely not Blair-plus: Blair manifestos liked to punish Labour supporters and public servants with yet more purchaser-provider institutional change: this time there are collaborative federations of services, not cut-throat competition. This time people get rights to higher standards, and local services decide how to deliver them.
Good stuff, but not showy: "ambitious but affordable", "bold yet realistic" , Labour claims. Will it do the trick? Few specifics will reach the radar of most voters, but its direction of travel will. The emphasis falls on building new industry and creating jobs and apprenticeships while safeguarding schools, Sure Start and universal free nursery places, with extra credits for the youngest children. All that is at risk and unringfenced in Conservative plans, which instead spend on tax cuts.
By what osmosis people absorb party policies is hard to know. The air war of insults is unenlightening, and all the newspapers are partisan, some raving. Yet the choice percolates through. It may be a grim choice – Cameron\'s "deeper, faster" cuts or five more years of Brown. But in the grip of recession, our poll is another reminder that this is no beauty contest: if it was, Cameron would be 20 points ahead. People are not bought cheap: the Tories got no bounce for their tax giveaways on national insurance or £3-a-week marriage dowry. A fuel tax bribe could backfire if people see the unpredictable billions it may drain from the Treasury.
Voters may not follow the details, but they can smell a rat. Labour\'s manifestos is a good reminder of the real choice, that same old choice as ever – Tory tax cuts or protecting public spending. Labour is fired up with a new anger at what Cameron would do.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]air-plus-bold-manifesto-labour
