Steven Rose

Introduction. Spending commitments. Addressing climate change. Broadband as modern infrastructure investment. Education for life. Regressive policies. Where is the welfare system? Raising revenue. 95% is a good and untruthful line. Corporate tax. Worker’s shares policy is a second corporate tax. The average citizen and tax. Issues of personal interest. Brexit policy. Council tax. Trust on foreign policy. Paternity leave. Conclusion. Introduction. The 2019 Labour manifesto has been met with the support of 160 economists and the adoration of the party rank and file. It is a bold document designed to attack - and attack hard - in order to make up the current gap in the polls between Labour and the Conservatives. Contrast this with the Conservatives, who have chosen to put out a manifesto sparse on content and detail, presumably hoping to ride their current lead through to December 12th.  While the manifesto is clearly radical in the rate of spending increases...

The 2019 Labour conference was largely overshadowed by the Supreme Court ruling on the illegality of the lengthy prorogation of Parliament. The event found itself dramatically impacted, and the audience found themselves observing a shortened version of Corbyn’s speech, which (presumably) omitted a number of key policy announcements, such as the uncomplicatedly positive move to scrap universal credit. In the end the speech contained only one new policy announcement. This was Labour’s new policy regarding the production of pharmaceuticals, which they have detailed in the accompanying document titled Medicines For the Many: Public Health Before Profit.  By and large, the document and policy seem well intentioned - while the driving factor of NHS woes is simply underfunding, it behoves us to consider other systemic features of the economy that work against an effective British health system. Overall, the positives of the document outweigh the negatives. Many proposals on how to w...