Polly Toynbee spills the beans in the Guardian today on work to be published by Compass next week on what should be in a Labour manifesto and what people thought of the idea when polled:
What might Labour do? Still wrangling over the manifesto, their only hope is to be the change that Cameron isn't. Even adopting a few of the beacon policies to be published next week by Compass would energise Labour support — and the opinion polling proves it. Electoral reform to break the Westminster stalemate (65% support), splitting banks to shed their casinos (68%), cut Trident (63%), take back the railways (70%), ban advertising to children (77%), replace fees with a fairer graduate tax (88%), a Robin Hood tax on bank transactions (53%), cap loan shark interest rates (89%), create a high-pay commission (65%) — and a living wage (58%).
Now that would be a manifesto.
Labour would win, hands down.
So why won't it say it?
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But nothing in there about what people actually care about
Richard,
The problem is that labour had 13 years in power and did none of those things. That was 13 years with a majority that allowed them to do anything they wanted. And as that ridiculous figure from UKIP (isn’t he getting a lot of publicity on the BBC for a fringe candidate who can only damage the Tory vote. Interesting that they won’t give the BNP – whose natural supporters are the working class labour voters the same amount of publicity) said on the Radio the other day, they spent 50 times longer debating whether to ban fox hunting than they did on whether to go to war in Iraq.
It would be an interesting election campaign: “We had 13 years to do whatever we wanted but we’ve only made our mind up now”. How about a big poster of Gordon Brown: “Indecisive and lacking in courage. But I’ll do better next time”.
I increasingly suspect Labour may be third in the popular vote this election. The odds are less than evens on Labour getting under 30%. The Tories will struggle to get 40 and I don’t believe others will get anywhere near the current projections.
@mad foetus
So you’re saying the far right will come through strongly?
Richard
@mad foetus
For the sake of a bit of balance: The Tories were in last time for 18 years. They had the best years of N. Sea oil revenue plus massive privatisation receipts. Instead of investing this in our run-down infrastructure, they used it to fund unemployment in order to weaken the unions. They managed 2 recessions which were both deeper than our competitor nations. Although New Labour continued many of their neoliberal economic policies they did at least ‘fix the roof’ and even now, in a much worst recession, have had a care to keep people in employment.
Richard,
Don’t think of it in terms of left and right – its more to do with class. UKIP appeals to Telegraph readers, most of whom are middle aged or older, well off and conservative. The BNP appeals to Sun readers, largely the uneducated, male working class who would otherwise vote Labour. I suspect most UKIP supporters will drift back to the Tories because they don’t want Labour in, whereas the BNP vote could hold up because their voters feel betrayed by Labour.
But my real point was that while I think it fairly clear that the Tories will win the popular vote by some margin, and Labour will do badly, the Lib Dems could conceivably poll fairly well.