新香港六合彩开奖结果

It is manifesto week in the general election.听

It is a milestone moment, even if it is generally not quite as important as it once was. When I was young, manifestos used to appear in high street newsagents. I remember them propped up on the shelves above the Mars Bars and the Marathons (as Snickers were called back then). Nowadays, few people will read them online, let alone buy them in the shops, but they remain important, nonetheless.听

Manifesto publication is one of the major set-pieces of the campaign; a chance for each party to set out its stall. But more than that, the very best of them throughout history have presented powerful stories to the country, setting out the core of an approach to governing, or a public philosophy, if you will.

Winning the peace

Labour鈥檚 1945 manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, outlined its programme with a ruthless simplicity. The British people had won the war in Europe, it argued, not the elites in Westminster or Whitehall. And the British people therefore deserved to win the peace too.听

鈥淭he Labour Party will put the community first and the sectional interests of private business after鈥�, it insisted. 鈥淟abour will plan from the ground up - giving an appropriate place to constructive enterprise and private endeavour in the national plan, but dealing decisively with those interests which would use high-sounding talk about economic freedom to cloak their determination to put themselves and their wishes above those of the whole nation.鈥�

Mrs Thatcher鈥檚 manifesto in 1979 was equally strident and straightforward. Opening with a foreword from the leader itself, it declared that 鈥渘o one who has lived in this country during the last five years can fail to be aware of how the balance of our society has been increasingly tilted in favour of the State at the expense of individual freedom. This election may be the last chance we have to reverse that process, to restore the balance of power in favour of the people. It is therefore the most crucial election since the war.鈥�

It is unlikely that the manifestos in this 2024 general election will be so decisive. The political world has become generally more cautious since 1979, with at least as much effort taken to avoid political bear-traps as there is to set out an ambitious course. Advisors will have spent hours ruling good ideas out for fear of how they may be received, as well as reluctantly putting bad ideas in because they think it might play well.听

Nonetheless, this week鈥檚 manifestos will give some sense of how the parties intend to approach the fundamentals of governing in the next few years. And as such, there are two causes for concern that, as voters, we should all be looking out for.听

The first cause for concern would be an abundance of sticking plasters. Everyone knows that the challenges the country faces at the moment are intense. From sluggish growth in the economy to the decay of core public services, the threats of rampant climate change to the social tensions of the culture wars, the British public have the right to expect serious efforts to grapple with the world in front of us. We should all be alert this week, therefore, to suggestions that things can be easily patched-up. Make-do-and-mend might be a British tradition, but it is profoundly unsuited to this particular political moment.

Snake oil solutions听听

The second cause for concern is almost the opposite. And that is the empty promise of snake oil solutions. Any manifesto that tells you that there is a simple, snazzy idea out there that can 鈥� or will 鈥� make everything suddenly better, is telling you a lie. However exciting advances in technology might be, Artificial Intelligence is not going to fix the problems of the NHS overnight. Green technologies by themselves are not going to restore economic growth. And somehow bringing net-migration down to zero is not going to magically help young people get a house.听

Both of these points might seem obvious in the cold light of a blog post. But they are not obvious in the bright heat of an election campaign. There will be many an advisor, or a manifesto writer, trying to persuade their political masters and the public at large either to put up with sticking plasters or to try to dazzle with snake oil. And the only people who can really call each of them out, are not the factcheckers or the journalists, but the voters themselves.听

So, when the manifestos are launched this week, be it at the rumoured Formula One HQ or somewhere less exciting, the job falls to all of us to keep our standards high. Britain needs parties who are honest about the challenges ahead. It needs real solutions, not magical ones. And, perhaps most of all, it needs plans that direct us for the long-term and not just the next four weeks. 听

Marc Stears is the Director of the 新香港六合彩开奖结果Policy Lab and was a co-author of the 2015 Labour Party Manifesto.听
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