The Liberal Democrat’s, polling as the fourth largest party right now, have published the first proper manifesto of the election. It has taken a long time and we are still waiting for the others, but the yellow party seems to be trying to be efficient here, despite the fact that we have already had almost 3 weeks of the 6 week election already go by. Though manifestos generally don’t sway much of the vote and instead are used by a few political commentators and experts to see where the party is going ideologically. For the Lib Dems there is a big emphasis on social democracy as always and trying to show some harmony with Labour. We must remember that the non-official pact with the Labour Party in this election has certainly affected how the Lib Dems campaign and what they are campaigning on.
Firstly, the Lib Dems are polling at around 9% and thanks to the Labour Pact are on course to win around 35 seats according to a study by the Financial Times. There are even more optimistic studies using tactical voting as a model of prediction putting the Lib Dems on course to win up to 60 seats. Though their leader, Sir Ed Davey, has struggled up until the General Election was called, going into hiding basically after the Horizon Scandal found he was involved in the cover-up indirectly. He has since spent the last few weeks out and about doing weird and whacky things like falling off a paddle board, going down a water slide and other things to try to make his image a bit more fun. His aides are clearly hoping people forget his past and try to relaunch him as a fun kind of person.
The Lib Dem manifesto revolves around a few important things: the environment, public services, foreign policy, democracy and the economy. 116 pages of this book are too much to go through but the main thing about this is that the Lib Dems will solve problems using state solutions. They want to ‘repair the broken relationship with Europe’ and taxing big banks more and the use of more windfall tax. That and closing tax loopholes in capital gains tax will, according to the Lib Dems will raise 9bn pounds which will be respent on public services. 8,000 GPs will be hired, and 100% garuntee for cancer diagnosis for waiting up to 60-odd days. Giving more rights to unpaid carers is another one.
The environment is a big one for the Lib Dem’s, hoping to appeal to young voters. Their pledge is to reach net zero by 2045 with huge investment into renewable energy and holding big companies to account by creating duty to protect the environment.
The Lib Dems promise to rejoin the single market of the EU sometime in the future.
Lastly, on the constitution, they want to give the vote to 16-17 year olds, to change the electoral system but they did not state which one, and reforming the House of Lords to make it more democratic, but it is not clear how this would be achieved.
Lastly, they wish to legalise cannabis.
9bn the Lib Dems want to raise to pay for all of the new things on health and social care including free personal care for all, is just a fraction of what the UK actually spends on healthcare which is a whopping 192bn per year. They are intentionally vague on constitutional reform in that they are not offering an alternative. They also put their pledge to rejoin the single market right at the back of their manifesto. They do not give any sort of environmental road map in how to achieve net zero by 2045 and their raising of taxes for rich companies tend to stem more from ‘housecleaning’ rather than actually raising taxes in real terms. The manifesto doesn’t really bring much clarity.
The manifesto is designed to appeal to young voters in Tory constituencies. The Lib Dem’s are hopeful they will take votes from disaffected centrists Tories. They hope to also catch the left wing youth vote in the Tory shires and hope that this will bounce them into winning seats in areas the Labour Party don’t really have much chance of winning. It will be interesting to see how this manifesto fits in with the Labour manifesto which should be designed to amalgamate the Lib Dem one as per the pact that they have both basically agreed to. Labour have already, for example, committed to giving 16-17 year olds the vote. The Lib Dem’s are trying to be aspirational for young people, choosing instead to lean in to, rather than to diversify, their voting base. There is some stuff for the elderly like free personal care but the weak explanation of funding makes it clear their manifesto is not going to be something for the middle-aged, affluent or aspirational middle-classes, aside from those who have the environment as their top issue.
In all, this is social democracy packaged for the young, the environmentalists and the old. Despite whether this works or not in voting terms, it is designed to work with the Labour pact that will see their seats in parliament go from 30-60 without achieving much more than 9% of the vote. They look still set to be the 4th largest party in terms of vote share but 3rd largest in terms of seats. They are playing the electoral system game incredibly well and have done so well in the past, targeting extremely specifically their chosen constituencies, mostly revolving around where they have a high representation in local councillors. This manifesto will work quite well for the rural vote and will probably wipe out the Tory vote in the small areas in the cities like Richmond in London. It will be interesting what brand of social democracy the Labour Party will employ as a result of this, though the prediction is that they will provide more socialist policies to circle round this manifesto.
The Liberal Democrats do not need to appeal to many. This manifesto does not appeal to a majority of the UK population when taking into consideration the public attitude to health, the economy and immigration, the last of which the Lib Dems don’t even mention. Their pro-EU stance will grate against many voters but they will hope no one notices that one. But the Lib Dems do what they always do; provide social democratic answers to questions that people don’t like but they are there, they do their thing, they stick around. They will probably do quite well, especially as a subsidiary of the Labour Party.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For mor information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
Comments