Labour policies

• Economy - Miliband/ Brown

  • Brown during financial crisis 2008/9 - part nationalisation of collapsing banks, injected money into economy, return to Keynesianism
  • Miliband retained New Labour policies, water downed version of coalition economics 2010

  Largely third way
• Economy - Corbyn 2015-19 + election manifesto

  • Old lab policies, 80% of MPs supported no confidence against him, hard left policies and grassroot support
  • Sceptical of global capitalism and neoliberal free market, high public spending etc

  Mostly social democracy - but also some pragmatic as he made no attempt to reintroduce old Clause IV commitment, wholesale principle of common ownership scrapped under Blair

  
  

  Manifesto

  • Nationalise railways, royal mail, water industry and big 6 energy companies
  • 1 million new unionised jobs
  • £400 bil public national transformation fund - focusing on energy, transport, schools, hospitals and housing
  • Increased taxation for top 5%, new taxes on MNCs

  All social democracy
• Economy - Starmer 2020-24

  • Sacked left wingers like Rebecca Long-Bailey
  • 2023 speech Starmer dicthed traditonal tax and spend, no substitute for robust private sector
  • Reeves shadow chancellor 2024 halved amount for Green investment from £28 bil to £14 bil, any extra funding needs to come from overall econ growth

  Mainly third way but some pragmatic - Starmer largely supported level and extent of Cons gov intervention in the economy during Covid
• Economy- Starmer manifetso

  Manifesto

  • Raise £8 bil in tax by clamping down tax avoidance, altering non-dom tax status and applying VAT to private schools
  • £1.7 bil a year on a Green Prosperity Plan - Great British Energy (state owned) , which will partner the government, increase renewable energy, and create 650k jobs by 2030.  
  • £1.5 bil on measures around NHS & schools  
  • £1.1 bil on ‘green investments’
  • Effectively renationalise rail by taking over current private rail franchise services when their contracts end - 0 cost
  • Build £1.5 mil homes in 5 years, 300k yearly
  • Main priority was wealth creation - more investment (due to securonomics - gov stability) , little gov spending
  • Tough spending rules, some fiscal rules - gov budget to be balanced by 2029, debt must be falling as a share of GDP by 2029
  • No raising of personal income, VAT or NI taxes
  • + international free trade + EU deal
  • Skills England task force
• Economy - Starmer current

  • 2024 NI increase for businesses, tax rises for businesses, NI contributions expected to raise £25.7 billion a year by 2029/30 - more expensive to employ people, job cuts, higher consumer prices
  • Plan for change - rebuilding Britain, 1.5 mil homes, 150 major economic infrastructure projects, £125 mil in clean energy projects in Aberdeen
  • Reeves fiscal rules - ensures by 2029 gov is only sending the same amount of money coming in through tax, no borrowing
  • Plan for growth
  • Stability in public finances, controlling gov spending
  • Reform which makes it easier for business to trade
  • Investment
  • Improved productivity in workers, rule of gov, businesses and institutions to deliver skilled worker force
• Economy - Starmer 2025 spring statement

  • Spending cuts announced due to
  • supposed 22bn black hole in public finances (OBR found only a 9.5bn shortfall)
  • increased defence spending - support for NATO
  • lower than expected growth level, OBR forecasted 1% in 2025
  • Welfare cuts in these areas
  • Cuts to PIP, Lab partys own figures suggested this would
  • Push 250k into poverty, including 50k children
  • Negatively affect 3.2 mil families by 2029
  • Renewed push that everyone capable of work is expected to work
  • Cuts to civil service, depts expected to cut 15% of their administration costs to save £2bn by 2029, cost 10-50k jobs
• Law and order - Miliband

  • continued tough on crime + causes of crime
• Law and order - Corbyn 2015-19 + election manifesto

  • Opposed some new lab/ cons measures on increasing security powers, supported tackling social issues that led to crime - however did attack cons cuts to police numbers

  Manifesto

  • End prison sentences that are less than 6 months for non violent/ non sexual crimes
  • Restore publicly run national probation service, stop private prisons
  • Restore legal aid cuts for housing, social security and immigration cases, recruit new community lawyers
  • Close all immigration detention centres, remove hostile environment
  • No cap on immigration numbers
  • Hire 22k new police officers and restore prison officer numbers to 2010 levels
• Law and order - Starmer 2020-24 + manifesto

  • Wants voters to see Labour as party of law and order, safer streets

  Manifesto

  • Tackle backlog of 68k court cases, specific fast track for rape
  • Work on knife crime - youth offending teams, create young futures programme
  • Respect orders - tackling antisocial behaviour, shoplifting, flytipping, vandalism
  • Build more prisons - no numbers / time scale given
  • ’Thousands of extra police officers’ - no numbers or time scale
  • Reduce net migration, fast track removals from UK to safe countries for illegal asylum seekers
  • 1000 person investigative unit - border and security command
  • to halt illegal immigration and pay for it by scrapping Rwanda scheme, saving over £500m over 5 years
• Law and order - Starmer current

  • Gov promised to maintain most immigration restrictions imposed by Cons in early 2024
  • Ban on partners and children of care workers and most overseas students
  • New border security command established, annual budget of £150 mil dedicated to breaking people smuggling gangs
  • Neighbouring policing guarantee fully announced and included
  • £200 mil more spending on neighbourhood policing, recruit 13k more officers, every N will have named police officer in their community - critics pointed out that only 3k will be real police officers
  • Focus on anti social behaviour
  • Plan for change announced in Dec 2024 - need for national security and neighbourhood policing guarantee
• Welfare / social - Miliband

  • Criticised the coalition reforms on building an internal market, pledged extra £2.5 bil each year by end of Parliament - Social demo
  • Accepted need for constraint on welfare spending given economic circumstances, cutting entitlement for undeserving, focused on policies that benefitted lower paid workers over those who didn’t work
  • Attacked Gove education policy, did little to say he’d reverse the coalition policy
• Welfare / social - Corbyn 2015-19 + manifesto

  • Restore benefits cuts under Cons in areas such as tax credits and housing benefit for young
  • Saw poor as victims of capitalism, public services had to address this
  • Immediate scrapping of tuition fees
  • Benefits overhaul
  • Scrap universal credit, bedroom tax, benefit cap
  • Right to food - halve food bank use within a year and eliminate altogether in 3 years
  • Free social care for everyone 65+
  • Triple lock pensions, increase maternity pay
  • Increase NHS funding by 4.3% 2019-24, £26 bil overall, 27 mil more GP appointments
  • End prescription charges, annual dentist checkups
  • Increase education spending by £7.5 billion in real terms by 2023/24
  • Abolish tuition fees, restore maintenance grants
  • Abolish private schools
  • 1 mil new social homes in 10 years, ensure private home builders have to create more low cost starter homes
• Welfare / social - Starmer 2020-24

  • Acknowledged the need for more investment in public services - but also stated ‘we wont be able to spend our way out of their mess‘
  • Streeting - shadow health minister, refused to back nurse or junior doctor wage demands, ‘we cannot continue pouring money into a 20th century model of care‘
  • Kendall - shadow work and pensions, ‘no option for a life on benefits’, tougher measures on universal credit, benefits to go hand in hand with responsibilities
  • Pledged to reform tuition fees, abandoned this promise
• Welfare / social - Starmer manifesto + current

  • Limited NHS commitments
  • Create 40k extra appointments a week (2% increase), train thousands more GPs
  • Over 700k more dentist appointments
  • Gneralistic commitments to delivering
  • Think tank Nuffield trust - stunning lack of detail in terms of health policies
  • Will continue with Cons plan to implement in 2025 a social care lifetime cost cap of 86k
  • National care service to improve care homes etc
  • But no more new money
  • Welfare focus is on getting more people into work
  • Nothing other than ensuring universal credit works, tackling childhood poverty though breakfast clubs etc
  • Education
  • 20% VAT to private school fees to raise £1.6 bil, use to recruit new state school teachers
  • Free breakfast club
  • Trained MH professional in each school
• Welfare / social - Starmer current

  • Introduction of VAT on private schools
  • Money meant to be spend recruiting 6.5k new teachers - the campaign group Full Fact reported in March 2025 ‘unclear how this will be measured, don’t have any data on how number of teachers has changed since Lab came into gov‘
  • 2024-25 NHS
  • Abolished NHS england (quango), instead it will be run by Dep of Health
  • However Starmer has established 20 more quangos in first 6 months of being in power such as Great British Energy and Skills England
  • Announced new 10 year health plans - 3 key priorities of promoting community over hospital care, improving ICT to modernise NGS and renewed focus on prevention over care
  • Dec 2024 - set up plan for change
  • Ending hospital backlogs, record proportion of 5 year olds starting school ready to learn - 75% hitting early years foundation standard at age 5, up from current 67%
  • New teachers
  • Welfare in econ
• Foreign policy - Miliband 2010-15

  • Backed EU membership, ruled out joining Euro
  • Backed NATO and special relationship with USA
  • Maintenance of trident nuclear deterrent
• Foreign policy - Corbyn 2015-19 + manifesto

  • Tradtional hard left - anti-EU, anti-NATO
  • Non intervention in world politics and abolishment of nuclear weapons
  • However - unenthusiastically backed remain, emphasising EU role in protecting workers rights
  • Backed a business and job friendly soft Brexit, maintaining membership of EU customs market
  • Agreed to retain Trident nuclear weapons and NATO membership

  Manifesto

  • Ensure workers rights are protected in trade deals
  • Work to reform WB, IMF, WTO as injustices towards global south are addressed
  • Spend £4 bil a year on international climate finance initiatives
  • Pragmatic - rule out no deal Brexit, renegotiate terms, hold a second referendum on leaving on these terms or remaining
• Foreign policy - Starmer 2020-24

  • Wants to restore international aid funding to pre-Covid 0.7% of GNI as soon as fiscal circumstances allow
  • Britain 2030 agenda - ambitious trade policy, prioritising fairness and market access, protecting environment and HR here and abroad
  • Made Brexit work - renegotiating better trade relationship
  • Wants to work closely with WTO and CPTPP Asia pacific trade
  • Very committed to NATO and supporting Ukraine - loan to Ukraine at £2.26 bil
  • Initial support to Israel following Hamas attack in 2023, but eventually supported ceasefire
  • Supports trident nuclear weapons, calls for new gen to be built in 2024

  Manifesto

  • Would like to get 2.5% of GDP spending on defence, no pledge to do so
  • Cast iron support to nuclear weapons and NATO
• Foreign policy - Starmer current

  • Gov announced in 2025, increase in defence budget 2.5% in 2025, 2.6% in 2026 - in response to Trump, Ukraine etc
  • To partly pay for this - overseas aid budget reduced from 0.5% to 0.3%
  • Talked about resettling relations with EU, so far only small scale meetings
  • Lammy - foreign sec, stated that ‘progressive realism advocated for using realist means to pursue progressive ends‘
  • Critics - Badenoch has said you can’t be progressive and realist at the same time
  • Maintained cons support for Ukraine, allow use of UK storm shadow missiles to attack targets in Russia