All the party manifestos for the 2024 general election explained
All the party manifestos explainedSource: Independent
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00:00I'm John Rentall, Chief Political Commentator for The Independent.
00:04All the parties have published their pledges for the election now,
00:08so let's rattle through them.
00:09The Labour Party.
00:11Their most important promise is 40,000 new NHS appointments
00:17to try and clear the backlog.
00:19That's going to be paid for by abolishing non-DOM status.
00:23That's people who technically are domiciled outside the UK,
00:29and so they don't pay tax on all their earnings,
00:32like the Prime Minister's wife.
00:34Labour's second pledge is 6,500 new teachers in state schools.
00:39That's going to be paid for by putting VAT on private school fees.
00:43Third big pledge from Labour is GB Energy, a new energy company,
00:48or is it an investment vehicle? Nobody really knows.
00:51But it sounds very good and it goes down extremely well
00:54every time Keir Starmer mentions it, so they stick that in.
00:57And finally, border command is another thing that Keir Starmer's
01:02going to set up to control our borders and stop the boats.
01:06Instead of stop the boats, the slogan is smash the gangs.
01:09I suspect that's probably going to be about as successful.
01:13The Conservatives.
01:14They opened their election campaign by promising to bring back
01:17national service, which was rather surprising.
01:19Only it's not national service as people remember it.
01:22It's voluntary activity for young people.
01:26Although it will be compulsory, the military option will be voluntary.
01:30The main pledge that the Conservatives are making in their manifesto,
01:33of course, is tax cuts.
01:35Two pence in the pound off national insurance for everybody.
01:40That's the third cut that the Conservatives are making.
01:44They're promising to make that cut if they win the election,
01:47which, of course, looks like a rather remote possibility now.
01:50The Tories' third pledge is the Rwanda policy of deporting
01:56migrants who arrive in small boats to Rwanda.
02:00Rishi Sunak says the flights will take off as soon as he's back
02:03in Downing Street if he wins the election.
02:05There's some scepticism about that, of course,
02:07because they could be challenged in the courts.
02:10And then finally, the Conservatives have also promised to build
02:13more houses than Labour.
02:14They say they're going to build 1.6 million houses in the next five years,
02:18whereas Labour's only promising 1.5 million.
02:21And neither of those promises is particularly believable.
02:24The Liberal Democrats, their promises focus on dealing with the problem
02:29of sewage in our rivers and beaches.
02:32They want to spend more money on children's mental health and social care.
02:37The way they're going to raise the funds is a little bit opaque,
02:39if you ask me.
02:41They're going to tax share buybacks.
02:43Nobody understands what those are.
02:45And so that's a fairly safe source of imaginary money.
02:48The Green Party.
02:50Now, the Green Party manifesto is interesting
02:51because it's got some humongous promises, spending promises in it.
02:55They're going to spend vast amounts on public services,
02:59the NHS, schools, and renationalising a lot of industries.
03:04And they're going to pay for it by swinging tax increases,
03:08which they say will fall on the rich,
03:10but the numbers are so large that it's difficult to see
03:13how they're going to get that money out of just a small number of plutocrats.
03:21Finally, there's reform, whose big issue is immigration.
03:25They say that the government has failed to stop the boats,
03:27which is obviously true.
03:29But when you press Nigel Farage on what his alternative policy would be,
03:33it is essentially to go to war with France.
03:37His Reform Party manifesto says that migrants who arrive on the beaches of Kent
03:44will be taken back to French ports and dumped on the quayside there.
03:48And if the French object to that, then we'll have a big row with them.
03:51I'm not sure how credible a policy that really is.
03:54So that's my roundup of the five main party manifestos.
03:58You can keep up with all the election news on the Independent website.