General Election 2024: Labour’s manifesto begs the question, would we rather have a government that tries or that lies?

This manifesto - focused on ‘hope, growth, and wealth creation’ as Starmer put it - seems to be a modest plan that is based on the key word of this year’s Labour campaign: change.

Starmer and Labour’s plan for the next Parliament invokes a sense of realism and some sort of acceptance in the situation at hand. Change has been made difficult by the Conservatives and Labour is prepared to turn the situation around. The changes that Starmer is proposing are ones we’ve heard all about, and they are difficult to achieve. For instance, driving down NHS waiting lists has been one of the many broken promises of the Conservative campaign.

New data shows hospital waiting lists in England just rose for the first time in seven months. Not a particularly big rise - 1.4% between March and April - but nonetheless the biggest increase in more than a year, in a metric Rishi Sunak pledged to bring down. Under Labour, reducing these lists by creating 40,000 extra appointments and operations a week is just a tiny shift and a fairly small percentage. Yet having this small win, this extra step, is what the entire Labour manifesto seems to be relying on.

Labour needed a realistic plan, and while it may be true that changes will be slow, little by little is better than remaining in the dark room Rishi Sunak and the Conservative party have created. Starmer’s aim is, really, to switch the lights on and show what’s in the room. By disillusioning the Tories and making them the common enemy, Starmer continues to protect his double advantage over Sunak in the polls.

By appealing to the wider population, for example by pledging to ban conversion therapy, change the care system, and build new housing, Labour seems to be bringing a hope that has been lost under the Tories. These targeted areas cover Britain’s biggest issues and we’re happy to buy it - even though it is questionable whether these promises are actually feasible in the real world.

Many are also wondering if Labour’s plan to increase VAT on private schools will provide the funding predicted and if it would impact at all their pledge to recruit 6,500 more teachers into England’s state schools. Will this extra cash provide extra teachers in a profession where the key issue is actually workload?

This isn’t too different from their aim to revive private investment in skills, training and transport. This ‘growth pledge’ is needed to equalise the UK’s efficiency with its international peers but we all know unforeseen events can destabilise the government just as the COVID-19 pandemic did to the Conservatives under Boris Johnson.

With Labour’s promise to deliver “change worth having and change worth voting for”, Brits must admit that while no hikes to income tax, national insurance, and VAT sounds like pretty good news, Keir Starmer has plenty of spending commitments which only they can fund. So the question really becomes, where will all that money come from? As any government, where money is needed, money is taken.

John O’Connell, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said voters hoping for tax cuts will have been left “bitterly disappointed” by the Labour manifesto, which is an appropriate reaction preparing Britain for the harsh reality that taxes are unlikely to go down at the speedy pace initially hoped.

This manifesto is, perhaps, best-described as ‘targeted hope’. Britain, and those around world watching, might have expected Labour to come through the conservative ashes and create a country reborn. But they didn’t come up with a magic solution for everything and have instead posed the question, would you rather have a government that tries or a government that lies?