From Starmer’s Labour to Farage’s Reform – could we build a better Britain using party manifestos? | Zoe Williams

IIt’s true that election manifestos are no match for one another – and in recent years the variation in detail, credibility and meaning has become more pronounced than ever. But it is also true that there are things that can be gleaned from their recurring themes. Also, there are objectively good ideas that may come from a party that will never be able to implement them, but they deserve exposure nonetheless.

Looked at this way, it’s a great year to be a dentist or in construction. Each party (Bar Reform and the SNP) talk a great game about dental services – even, ironically, Conservatives, who have a £200m ‘recovery plan’. The toothache doesn’t feel very metaphorical when you have it, but the problem speaks to a wider truth that Keir Starmer made explicit in his manifesto launch speech: that the real impacts of deteriorating public services are too obvious to ignore – which is exactly why everyone promises that the years of nothing working are over.

Housing and planning reforms are on the mind – areas where promises are often made but rarely kept. More original are proposals (unsurprisingly from the Greens) that all new buildings should meet Passivhaus standards or equivalent and measures to end emissions from existing homes. All of this would dramatically reduce household energy use, so it would have an impact beyond housing, on net zero targets and the cost of living.

Labour’s Warm Homes Plan is at the foot of the same territory, while the Liberal Democrats made the same promise as the Greens. They and Plaid Cymru are targeting second homes and buy-to-let properties as a driver of the housing shortage, with the former proposing a 500% increase in council tax on them. Whether or not they are able to enact these policies, it’s a pretty meaningful statement of allegiance. In a political landscape where everyone claims to hate homelessness as much as they love dentists, you have to watch pretty closely for these signals about whose interests come first, between the asset class and the rest. Labor plans to tackle ‘fleeceholds’ – rogue tenants – but has generally avoided opposition frames where it can.

What about the workers? Labor there are tough plans and an announced timetable – the first 100 days – for workers’ rights, a ban on zero-hours contracts, an end to dismissal and re-employment and the introduction of basic rights from day one, to paternity leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal. The minimum wage proposals are also rather soft: they intend to make it a ‘genuine living wage’, breaking one of George Osborne’s great deceptions: he just started adopting the phrase, without any meaningful measure of whether people could live with it or not. no. The Low Pay Commission will change its remit to take into account the cost of living. Strange that he hasn’t done this already, you might think. All changes likely on July 5th.

Ed Davey has led care from launch and the proposals are a mix of things that should have been done years ago (eg better career development and recognition of skills in the sector); things that were done years ago then destroyed by austerity (providing care packages based on need rather than ability to pay); and measures to improve the lives of unpaid carers, such as holiday breaks and increased carers’ allowance. The Greens repeat much of this, with more on childcare; both parties promise to remove the cap on two-child benefits, although only the Greens propose an immediate increase in Universal Credit, and only they ultimately aim for a universal basic income.

Who should you vote for if you want to rejoin the EU? A manifesto says that these are those smaller national parties with their big foreign policy, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. This is more realistic than the SNP, of course, given that its first and foremost stake is Scottish independence – or at least the fight for it.

And what if you thought that a ‘wealth tax’, far from being a smallpox-like menace that civilized society should turn away from, could actually be quite beneficial? Labor and the Conservatives will meet you by cracking down on tax avoidance; most parties support a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, bar reform and the SNP, which obliquely refers to the idea as an “attack on north-east Scotland”. The Greens propose a wealth tax of 1% a year on all assets over £10m, 2% on assets over a billion.

Ideas, ideas, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Reform believes it can end NHS waiting times by providing tax incentives to pharmacists, among other things, and restore law and order by ending police red tape. Farragists make anti-awakening statements that seem odd in print, like starting a fight in an empty bar. However, Reform is advocating for the abolition of student loan interest, which – were it not for its commitment to radically reduce student numbers and shut down universities that disagree with this … sorry, that do not respect “freedom of speech” – would they might otherwise have turned a head or two.

Many manifestos, some good ideas: but even taken together, a plan for national renewal? Not exactly. It’s more of a pity.