A Tale of Three Manifestos

Galloway - Schwab - Farage
George Galloway By Jessica Taylor – https://members.parliament.uk/member/609/portrait, CC BY 3.0, Link. Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Nigel Farage Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The manifestos came thick and fast throughout June for the General Election being held on July 4th 2024. 100 parties are involved, standing anything from 635 candidates to just one, with only eight parties fielding a hundred or more. Those eight parties are, in order of number of candidates:

Conservative and Unionist Party; Labour Party; Liberal Democrats; Reform UK; Green Party of England and Wales; Independents (459 across 317 different constituencies); Workers Party of Britain; and the Social Democratic Party.

For list fans, here are the names of all 100 parties, in alphabetical order:

Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party
Alba Party
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
Alliance for Democracy and Freedom
Alliance for Green Socialism
Animal Welfare Party
Aontú
Ashfield Independents
Blue Revolution Party
British Democrats
British Unionist Party
Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Independents (CANDI)
Christian Party
Christian Peoples Alliance
Climate Party
Co-operative Party
Communist Future
Communist League
Communist Party of Britain
Confelicity Party
Consensus
Conservative and Unionist Party
Count Binface Party
Cross-Community Labour Alternative
Democracy for Chorley
Democratic Unionist Party
English Constitution Party
English Democrats
Fairer Voting Party
Freedom Alliance
Green Party Northern Ireland
Green Party of England and Wales
Hampshire Independents
Heritage Party
Independence for Scotland Party
Independent Alliance (Kent)
Independent Network
Independent Oxford Alliance
Independents
Independents for Direct Democracy
Kingston Independent Residents Group (KIRG)
Labour Party
Liberal Democrats
Liberal Party
Libertarian Party
Lincolnshire Independents
Liverpool Community Independents
National Health Action Party
New Open Non-Political Organised Leadership
Newham Independents Party
North East Party
Official Monster Raving Loony Party
One Leicester
Party of Women
Peace Party
People Before Profit
Plaid Cymru
Portsmouth Independents Party
Propel
Psychedelic Movement
Putting Crewe First, Independent Residents Group
Rebooting Democracy
Reform UK
Rejoin EU
Save Us Now
Scottish Family Party
Scottish Greens
Scottish Libertarian Party
Scottish National Party
Scottish Socialist Party
Shared Ground
Sinn Féin
Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic and Labour Party
Social Justice Party
Socialist Equality Party
Socialist Labour Party
Socialist Party of Great Britain
South Devon Alliance
Sovereignty
Speaker
Stockport Fights Austerity No To Cuts
Swale Independents
Taking the Initiative Party
The Common Good
The Common People
The Mitre TW9
The Yoruba Party in the UK
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
Traditional Unionist Voice
Transform
True and Fair Party
UK Voice
UKIP
Ulster Unionist Party
Volt UK
Women’s Equality Party
Workers Party of Britain
Workers Revolutionary Party
Yorkshire Party

Yes, hot from the fiction factory, manifestos arrived by the dozen last month, and thanks to former PM Gordon Brown, who fought a court case some years ago to establish no pledges or promises in manifestos were binding in any way, everybody now knows that they’re simply not worth the paper they’re printed on, and can be considered a total waste of everybody’s time.

But they give politicians something, anything, to raise in the air as they spout lies, meaningless platitudes, and profess their love of motherhood and apple pie to TV audiences, and occasionally to real audiences, sat right in front of them.

Out of curiosity – call it masochism if you like, I downloaded manifestos from the top parties, and for those who like to know all the details, these are the dates the main manifestos were launched

10/6/2024 Liberal Democrats – ‘For a Fair Deal’ (117 pages)

11/6/2024 Tories – ‘Clear Plan | Bold action | Secure Future’ (80 pages)

12/6/2024 Green Party – ‘Real Hope. Real Change.’ (28 pages)

13/6/2024 Plaid Cymru – ‘For Fairness, For Ambition, For Wales’ (72 pages)

13/6/2024 Labour – ‘Change’ (136 pages, including 33 moody and ‘businesslike’ photos of Sir Keir)

17/6/2024 Reform UK – ’Contract with the People’ (28 pages)

19/6/2024 The Worker’s Party – ‘Britain Deserves Better’ (36 pages)

19/6/2024 SNP – ‘A Future Made In Scotland.’ (32 pages)

Apologies to parties not listed, and kudos to all of them for standing up for what they believe in, and trying to take those beliefs to people – it’s a shame that they can’t expect any sort of representation under the current British electoral system.

For anybody interested, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party manicfesto is available on their website at https://www.loonyparty.com/about/policy-proposals/

Only Three Manifestos?

There’s no way I’d look at any more than a handful of manifestos, but why just ‘three’?

As might be expected, the Uniparty (LibLabCon) manifestos are largely similar, and effectively incorporate the Green’s manifesto. All based on well-known globalist and corporatist policies pushed on citizens throughout the Anglosphere these days.

Individual ‘branches’ of the Medusa that is the Uniparty may place slightly different emphases on the same aspects of the agenda, but one thing you can be sure of is their universal cult-like adherence to mass immigration, multiculturalism, White replacement, the Afro-Asianisation of Europe, high taxes, high spending, kowtowing to global corporates, Net Zero, Agenda 2030, Build Back Better and the rest.

De-industrialisation, de-growth, de-energising, depopulation– it’s all there, sometimes hidden behind glossy words and photos. The new-primitivism and spartanism, intermittent energy supplies, food shortages, local area lockdowns (for the non-elite) – it’s not easy to ‘save the planet’, after all.

With the time teetering perilously close to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, you might think the need to pull back from war and nuclear destruction, whether accidental or deliberate, might be a central theme in all manifestos, as the survival of humanity is way more important than tinkering around the edges of some national issue.

But no, the ‘make love not war’ generation who are now running the show seem to have forgotten the old brotherhood of mankind international co-operation ideals, and it’s full steam ahead for ‘war war’ not ‘jaw jaw’.

So the Uniparty globalist manifestos count as one manifesto for the purposes of this article. What about the conservative and socialist manifestos?

Reform UK published the conservative manifesto, while The Workers Party of Britain offered their socialist alternative. Both are worth a closer look, as people will have forgotten what left wing and right wing policies are like over the past 30 years, while younger voters simply won’t have a clue.

For the purposes of this quick flick through these two manifestos, policies from both have been categorised and roughly placed against each other where possible, so some sort of comparison can be made.

The Workers Party manifesto covers several topics not mentioned in the Reform manifesto, such as foreign policy, trade unions, and wealth re-distribution, which can be found at the end of the table.

Workers Party policies are on the left of the table, Reform policies on the right, as you might expect.

The Workers Party Reform UK
Immigration / Mass Migration
Discourage economic migrants, except in areas of demonstrable labour shortage.

Improve border security, including heightened seagoing and coastal patrols.

Establish fair and equitable visa and citizenship arrangements to discourage organised crime.

Ensure that migration flows are matched to the ability of local communities to absorb new entrants.

Make regular calculations of the sustainable level of migration.

Aim immigration policy primarily at the protection of genuine refugees.

Invest in training for refugees to fill gaps in the provision of services to the wider population.

Review how our foreign policy actions, sanctions, and military aggression provoke migrant flows.

Promote fair trade with poorer nations, and ensure aid reaches the most vulnerable populations in the rest of the world.

End non-essential immigration, only accepting those with essential skills, like health workers.

Halt illegal immigration, and no illegal immigrants to be settled in UK.

Secure detention for illegals before return.

Deportation for Foreign Criminals at the end of their sentences.

Ban student dependents.

End immediate access to benefits for migrants.

Raise National Insurance rate to 20% for foreign workers, with health and care workers exempt.

Business & The Economy
Oppose CBDC, and preserve the right to use cash.

Establish sufficient community control of blockchain and AI to ensure positive social and economic outcomes for the working class and the vulnerable.

Ensure working class representation throughout the governance of the Bank of England.

Legislate to support workers and managers in the acquisition of productive enterprises and their assets that otherwise would be closed, or distributed to shareholders, where the company is either intended to be sold to a foreign owner, or to be closed in order to export production overseas.

End the dangerous practices of public-private partnership.

New national contracting agency.

Build regional and infrastructural banking support structures to provide credit on sustainable terms to socially useful productive capacity.

Reject the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Lift the minimum profit threshold to £100k to free 1m+ businesses from Corporation Tax.

Reduce Corporation Tax to 20%, and then 15% later.

Abolish IR35 rules.

Lift the VAT threshold to £150k.

Abolish Business Rates for High Street-based SMEs.

Establish an Online Delivery Tax for large multinational businesses.

Slash red tape and some employment laws.

Reform the planning system to fast-track infrastructure projects.

Health & The NHS
Fully renationalise the NHS.

Initiate a massive reduction in the scale of the administrative and management structure of the NHS.

Investigate PFI contracts (not only in the health service but in other sectors), and legislate if necessary to change the terms and conditions.

Increase health service capacity and integrate this with increased social care provision.

Monitor the pharmaceutical industry more closely and take it under “significant control”, because a private pharmaceutical sector operating with a public health service structure is a recipe for profiteering and potential malpractice.

Address the five key drivers of health outcomes – nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress and loneliness.

Declare war on ultra-processed food, improve the standard of school meals, and invest in health education.

Tackle the decline in mental health by improving the material quality of people’s lives; providing better, more integrated health and social care; promoting the development of people’s sense of self-worth; and rebuilding a ‘one nation’ sense of community, and a belief in the value and worth of every one of us on equal terms.

Reject the World Health Organisation (WHO) Pandemic Treaty and cancel our membership of the WHO unless there is fundamental reform to its structure and funding.

Improve efficiency, cut unnecessary managers.

Review Private Finance contracts.

Frontline NHS and social care staff to pay zero basic rate tax for 3 years.

End training caps for UK medical students.

Write off students fees pro rata per year over 10 years of NHS service.

20% tax relief on private healthcare and insurance.

NHS Voucher Scheme for private treatment if patients have to wait very long.

Bring in charges for patients who miss appointments.

Set up an excess deaths and vaccine harms Public Inquiry.

Taxes
Raise the Personal Allowance to £21,200.

Bring in a one-off 5% wealth tax on all estates valued fairly at over £10 million to raise £17bn.

Undertake a review of the tax system to stop the penalisation of single earner households.

Lift the income tax start point to £20,000 per annum.

Lower fuel duty, scrap VAT on energy bills, and scrap environmental levies.

Cut residential stamp duty.

Abolish inheritance tax for estates below £2m.

Restore the VAT refund scheme for tourist shopping.

Reform and simplify the Tax System.

Revive HMRC to collect unpaid taxes.

Net Zero
Hold a Net Zero Referendum.

Reverse all policies aimed at de-industrialisation.

Oppose unplanned Net Zero policies and unnecessary social disruption, and the increasing Net Zero costs for ordinary people as against capital accumulation for the few.

Scrap Net Zero and all related subsidies.

Scrap renewable energy subsidies.

Fast-track new gas, oil and shale gas licences, and new nuclear energy plants.

Law & Order, Policing, & Crime
Review policing priorities, and place a new focus on street crime.

Increase funding and capacity for operations targeting organised crime.

End the police force role as the cultural engineering arm of the state.

Resist the criminalisation of speech and thought.

Tackle police corruption.

Enable greater statutory independence from political interference or by the security services.

Boost police numbers, and get more police on the beat.

Start zero tolerance policing.

Increase stop and search.

Prison sentences for violent crime and carrying knives.

Life imprisonment for drug dealing and trafficking.

Establish a new leadership and recruitment regime, with a preference for ex-military personnel.

Abandon ‘Woke’ policing, and scrap all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I) roles and regulations to stop two-tier policing.

Set up a sentencing review.

Increase the criminal justice budget.

Build 10,000 new detention places.

Tackle child grooming gangs, with no bail, and deportation of offenders with dual citizenship.

Tackle youth crime with new training camps.

Housing
Work to make housing and rents affordable.

Guarantee housing for every citizen of the country

Commit to affordable housing for rural and coastal workers.

Start a programme of social housing that will override all unnecessary planning constraints.

Compulsory expropriation of all unused land banks and the fast-tracking of permits.

Ensure the right to buy or transfer of sub-standard buy-to-let assets to local authorities.

Protect the rights of those who have invested in property as a result of a lack of productive avenues of investment in industry.

Support increased tenant control of council housing.

Tighten up further on any eviction action that is not based on anti-social behaviour towards neighbours and the community.

Get tough on noise pollution, anti-social behaviour in general, and use of property for criminal purposes.

Reform the planning system to fast-track new housing on brownfield sites.

Reform social housing law to prioritise local people.

Restore landlords’ rights to deduct finance costs and mortgage interest from tax on rental income.

Abolish the Renters’ (Reform) Bill and boost the monitoring, appeals and enforcement process for renters with grievances.

Improve protection for Leaseholders.

Defence
Hold a referendum on membership of NATO.

Defence procurement to undergo a comprehensive review, with procurement from UK manufacturers to be a priority.

Hold a top-down review of the Royal Navy, Army, and Air Force to ensure that their structures are lean and efficient.

Provide better support for veterans, with a new Veterans Administration if required.

Seek new collective security arrangements centred on the protection of peoples and not of states or industries.

Support multilateral disarmament and the eradication of nuclear weapons.

Support a review of all emergency powers and related legislation.

Increase defence spending to 2.5% of National GDP, then later to 3%.

Reform defence procurement.

Set up a pay review to increase basic pay of service personnel.

Set up a new, dedicated Ministerial Department for Veterans.

Bring in a New Armed Forces Justice Bill to protect service personnel from civil law and human rights lawyers.

Increase recruitment.

Regenerate Britain’s defence manufacturing and technology industry.

The Workers Party Reform UK
Education
Free public transport arrangements for children nationwide.

Free breakfast and lunch meals during term time for all children.

Reduce class sizes.

Trust teachers to teach without administrative nonsense.

Invest in extra-curricular subjects like the arts and music as well as sports.

Guarantee a right to a free tuition first degree.

Debt for low income graduates to be increasingly remitted.

More support for vocational education, apprenticeships and trades education.

Ensure life-long educational opportunity.

Prioritise state education, with particular emphasis on early stage educational childcare provision.

Remove the charitable status of all private educational establishments.

A patriotic curriculum for schools so children are taught about their heritage.

Ban transgender ideology from schools.

20% tax relief on Independent Education, no VAT on fees, to incentivise parents to choose independent schools.

Permanent exclusion for violent and disruptive pupils.

New 2 year undergraduate courses.

Reduced funding for universities that undermine Free Speech.

Scrap interest on student loans.

Benefits
Design benefits to wipe out child poverty and poverty of the elderly.

People should work where they are able, but receive the support of the community where they are not.

Institute reforms to motivate people into work.

Bring in a 2 strike rule for job offers.

Face to face assessments to be required for benefits, with those with severe disabilities, or long-term illnesses exempt from regular checks.

Infrastructure
Significantly increase spending on social and economic infrastructure to reverse the trend of systemic breakdown.

Oppose ULEZ initiatives because of the costs they impose on working households and small businesses.

Scrap HS2.

Ban ULEZ and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.

Scrap 20mph zones except where safety is critical.

No bans on diesel and petrol cars, and no legal requirements for manufacturers to sell electric cars.

Focus on transport infrastructure outside the south east, improving existing road and rail links, and integrate services better.

Streamline government infrastructure funding streams.

Pensions & Security in Old Age
Set up a major review to restore a life-long commitment through earnings to adequate pension provision.

Retain the Triple Lock.

Aim to eventually make pensions tax free.

Give all workers the option of retiring at 60.

Set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Social Care System.

Stop tax avoidance by large care home owners.

Review pension provision.

Free Speech
Review all legislation and regulations to define only what is strictly harmful speech (intimidation and bullying, rather than robust opinion).

Review all the emergency powers and related regulation that the State has provided itself with in order to repress any attempt at fundamental change, or to deny a political organisation or individual a platform.

Review media ownership with a view to banning foreign ownership or direction of the means of communication and information.

Change the definition of Hate Crime to restore free speech.
Family & Children
Remove pressure on both parents to have to work to provide for their children.

Make it easier for families to be able to afford to have children in safe, supportive and secure conditions.

Support child-rearing, which is of immense social importance, as stable, happy children contribute to a stable society.

Support marriage through the tax system with a 25% transferable tax allowance.

Reform Child Benefits by front-loading the system for 1-4 year olds to allow parents the choice to spend more time with their children.

Mandate public single sex spaces.

Investigate social media harms to children.

British Culture
Overhaul funding of the arts, the charitable sector and the educational system to re-emphasise critical thinking, free debate, free speech and mutual respect.

Promote a fan-owned model of football clubs to resist overseas predatory club acquisition.

Enshrine the right to dissent and enjoy a private life and lifestyles that harm no other in employment law

Restrict the ability of private wealth and the NGO-industrial complex to engage in cultural engineering.

Reaffirm British sovereignty by rejecting the influence of the World Economic Forum.

Replace the 2010 Equalities Act, and scrap Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I) rules.

Bring in a Free Speech Bill to stop left wing bias, cancel culture, and politically correct ideology.

Stop Sharia law being used in the UK.

Scrap the BBC licence fee

Make St. George’s Day and St. David’s Day public holidays.

Political & Governmental Reform
Back proportional representation.

Reform the House of Lords to exclude professional politicians.

Uphold the right to peaceful protest and free speech, and resist attempts by authority to ‘chill’ legitimate opposition.

Hold a referendum on the future of the monarchy.

Improve regulation of political parties to ensure no foreign influence, stronger internal democracy, higher penalties for corruption, and easier recall arrangements.

Ensure an independent and wholly de-politicised judiciary.

Explore measures to increase working class representation.

Current expenditure not to be conducted in an inflationary way, but to ensure a fair distribution of resources that protect the most vulnerable, encouraging community-directed initiative and entrepreneurialism in the working class itself, and building the social infrastructure.

Hold a referendum on proportional representation voting for the House of Commons.

Commence reform of House of Lords and end political appointees.

Leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

Bring in a British Bill of Rights, codifying our freedoms.

Scrap EU laws and regulations.

Abandon the Windsor framework and return Northern Ireland to the United Kingdom.

Government departments to slash wasteful spending, cut bureaucracy, improve efficiency, and negotiate better value procurement without touching frontline services.

Halve foreign aid.

Replace Civil Service leaders with successful professionals from the private sector.

Reform postal voting system and stop postal voting for all except the elderly, disabled or those who can’t leave their homes.

Set up a new Anti-Corruption Unit for Westminster.

The Workers Party Reform UK
Rural Affairs
Encourage more local and national food production through tax incentives.

Crack down on the cruelty of factory farming.

Crack down on the import of foodstuffs that do not meet our ethical standards in regard to processing.

We will require demonstrable proof that all land held in the UK is being used for socially productive purposes.

We commit to the preservation of national parks and woodlands as well as meadows and other ecological treasures on the basis of full public access.

Improve UK food security by boosting UK food production.

Increase the Farming Budget to £3 Billion.

Scrap Climate-Related Farming Subsidies, and ensure productive land is farmed.

Protect country sports.

Stop supermarket price fixing, and support farm sales direct to the public.

Fishing & Coastal Communities
We will support our fishing fleets. End automatic access to UK waters for foreign fishing vessels.

Protect UK fish by requiring all foreign vessels to pay for a licence to access UK’s 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Police Britain’s 200 nautical mile EEZ properly.

Ban foreign supertrawlers from UK waters.

Rebuild UK fish processing industry and the UK’s fishing fleet.

Nationalisation
Selective nationalisation, especially of dysfunctional utilities, and for strategic assets.

Anything that is a monopoly or essential to the functioning of the country, especially those businesses strategically required in times of crisis, should be considered for re-nationalisation or nationalisation – such as Railtrack, the electricity grid, the water companies, the military-industrial complex, national food logistics, ports and airports.

Legislation should be enacted to give the national interest priority over the market.

Bring 50% of British utilities back into public ownership, with the other 50% to be owned by UK pension funds.
Foreign Policy
Support Palestine and a One State future: Israël-Palestine or Palestine-Israël, or the Holy Land.

Support the right of return for all those Palestinians ethnically cleansed over many years.

Bring an immediate end to Israeli settlement on the West Bank.

Conduct a thoroughgoing review of our defence and foreign policy.

Re-orient Britain away from Washington.

Oppose all war that is not defensive in purpose.

Oppose and disrupt any conscription of the working class for war with Russia or China.

Continue to support liberation movements.

Seek radical reform of the United Nations to empower it as genuine representative of the global community, and help it resist the domination of Washington.

Condemn the expansionary provocation of NATO in Ukraine.

Withdraw all military support from war zones, and work for a negotiated and peaceful settlement whenever and wherever war breaks out.

Local Government
Decentralise power to our towns and cities.

Ensure adequate authority over executive officers for local people.

Place senior council executives on five year rolling performance-related contracts.

Return to the ethos of municipal socialism.

Establish a fixed 6:1 pay level ratio between the lowest and highest paid staff members.

Whistleblower hotlines.

Tourist taxes for reinvestment in city and town centres.

Establish increased selective regional delivery of services with neighbouring authorities.

Workers & Trade Unions
Explore innovative demands for workers’ control and participation in the future of industry.

Worker participation would ensure a stronger fight against the closures of British industry.

This commitment to worker participation may not apply to small or most medium-sized businesses (unless they are subsidiaries of larger firms).

Develop a strategy for ensuring a greater voice for democratised trades unions in ensuring the maintenance of public services and making public services more effective.

Endorse union disaffiliation from the Labour Party.

Back all lawful trade union action.

Promote and enact the socialist idea of social ownership.

Wealth Redistribution
Redistribution of wealth and power in favour of working people.

Ensure a minimum decent income for those who can work, and for those who demonstrably cannot.

Re-industrialise the country based on new technology investment, and effective and efficient public spending directed at building infrastructures to provide future wealth.

And finally, why would anybody vote for Labour (the continuity Tories), who simply offer a turbo-charged version of the Tories’ last 14 years?

What about a bit of revolution with The Workers Party instead?

Or for anybody tired of politicians who continually promise change and transformation, how about a little bit of reform instead, either from parties offering rather more gentle national ‘reform’, or from a party with Reform in its name?

© NeverUpToTheJob 2024