British voters struggle under wave of manifestos as election nears

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You can’t have a parliamentary election in Britain without the political parties rushing in and publishing their manifestos–documents setting out what they’ll do if they get into office, or at least what they say they’ll do. 

English needs a word for a group of manifestos. A noise of manifestos? A wishfulness of manifestos? A scramble of manifestos? Nominations are open. No winner is likely to be chosen and any prize will have to be self-awarded, but please, don’t let that stop you from entering.

Like 99.7% of the population, I haven’t read any of them. I rely on newspaper summaries and I’ll confess to skimming most of those and skipping the minor ones entirely. But that won’t stop me from arguing that as a class manifestos range from the unreadable to the unreadable–unless, of course, it’s your job to read them, in which case, human ingenuity being the amazing thing it is, they open themselves before you and make a sort of sense. I know that because I used to work as an editor. Pay me money and it’s amazing how much sticky prose I can wade through.

Irrelevant photo: Wheee! Poppies.

But before parties issue their manifestos, they serve up bits of policy as appetizers, convinced they’ll make us hungry for the full meal. So we turn on the news one day to hear the Conservatives are going to cut taxes, the Liberal Democrats are going to save the National Health Service, and Labour’s going to put energy drinks off limits to people under 16. 

Then the next day dawns, as days will if you don’t keep an eye on them, and Labour’s going to get the NHS (that’s the National Health Service) back on its feet, the Lib Dems are going to create a minimum wage for carers (those are people taking care of a disabled partner/relative/whatever), and the Conservatives are going to cut taxes. The Greens will build new environmentally friendly housing and tax the wealthy.

Labour will also fix a million potholes. The Conservatives shoot back that they like cars more than Labour does but potholes build character. No nation with any backbone whatsoever would want them all filled.

You turn off the radio, but they’re on your TV. The Reform Party’s going to save the NHS. (Have you noticed a pattern here? Everybody’s going to save the NHS. The parties who had a large hand in its near-demise say nothing about why it needs saving.) The Lib Dems are going to bring down trade barriers. The Greens will go carbon neutral by 2040. Labour’s going to tax public schools, which in a bizarre twist of English history and language are actually private schools. The Conservatives are going to make sure every student studies English and math until they’re 18 and can explain why public schools are private. Students may need energy drinks to survive the beefed-up curriculum. 

The entire nation needs energy drinks to survive the election.

Reform is going to take Britain out of the European Union.

Wait. Britain already left the European Union. That was a stray page from a few years back. Fine, they’ll put Nigel Farage’s face on every TV screen every day. Policies don’t matter, personalities do, and he apparently has one, although I can’t bring myself to look at him long enough to verify that.

All the available parties agree to send toothbrushing squads to eligible homes but disagree on which homes should be eligible.

Eventually, all the parties publish their full manifestos and the drip-feed is over. The news shifts to the manifestos themselves.

How much does any of this mean? It’s not completely pointless. Voters can weigh the manifestos and calculate each party’s’ political tilt (in case it isn’t already obvious). They can look at the work of parties they don’t like and attack their weak points, which is why Labour has attack-proofed its manifesto so thoroughly that they haven’t left much for anyone to get excited over. Except for getting the Conservatives out of office, which after fourteen disastrous years I’m actually excited about.

But there’s another reason manifestos are useful: if a party promises something in its manifesto and gets into power and then follows through on that promise (that’s three ifs), the issue will carry a bit of extra political clout in the legislative process. 

But enough about manifestos. Let’s talk about the fun stuff–in other words, the Conservatives, because they’ve been such a gift to the cynical and the satirical. I can’t think what I’ll write about once they’re out of office. Let’s check in with a number of political departments.

 

The Department of Stupid Scandals

The Conservatives’ most damaging move hasn’t done any real-world damage, but it will help them lose the election: Rishi Sunak–that’s the prime minister–attended a D-day commemoration and left early while the leaders of other countries stayed in place and hid their boredom stoically. Cue outrage and offense.

The big scandals, like re-introducing nineteenth-century levels of poverty, don’t tend to lose elections. It’s the stupid stuff, like leaving a commemoration early. 

Ah, but there’s more to get outraged about: three days before the election was announced, Sunak’s top parliamentary aide (translation: he’s an aide and a member of parliament) got caught placing a £100 bet on the election’s date. No one’s saying whether or not he knew what the date would be, but at the very least he was in a position to take an educated guess. That could leave him in legal trouble for using confidential information to place a bet and in political trouble for damaging the reputation of the House of Commons. And since it’s the stupid scandals that bring politicians down, this one is rumbling on like low-grade thunder–distant but ongoing. The Gambling Commission has told bookmakers to comb through their records for others in the inner circle who might’ve placed substantial bets, because the betting odds on a July date shortened in the week before the announcement. And they’re finding them. 

On Thursday, the Conservative Party took down a social media post that said, “If you bet on Labour, you lose,” although I may not have the wording exactly right because, um,the post is gone. I’m sure someone in Conservative HQ is bellowing, “Okay, where’s the arsehole who wrote that?”

If the aide whose bet was first noticed had won, he would’ve made £500. He’s now looking at the possibility–remote but not out of the question–of not just a fine but two years in prison. But, you know, the bet was a sure thing.

 

The Department of We’re Not Really Members of our Party

Conservative candidate Robert Largan posted ads on social media that make him look like he’s running as a Labour candidate. And a Reform candidate. And a Lib Dem candidate.    

A Conservative member of the House of Lords has reposted tweets calling on people to back the Reform Party. One said that anyone who voted Conservative wasn’t patriotic.

And a Reform Party candidate, Grant StClair-Armstrong, was forced out of the party after an enterprising reporter dug up some 2010 tweets where he urged people to vote for the British National Party, which is variously described as fascist, ethnic nationalist, far right, anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim, and (by their own description) interested in making Britain a better place. 

His name will be on the ballot anyway. It’s too late to take it off. 

 

The Unseemly Ambition Department

With the election not yet lost and Sunak still head of his party, any number of Conservative MPs are hoping to replace Sunak. Three weeks before the election, campaigners were already on the receiving end of messages from them, saying, basically, Hey, remember me? I’m here and I’m thinking of you. Don’t forget my name when the time comes. 

But the front-runners need to do more than that if they want to lead the party after Suank’s demise. They have to be elected to Parliament, and this year that’s not guaranteed.

Not unconnected to those ambitions, for a while we heard rumblings from within the Conservative party that its right wing might publish a counter-manifesto if the official one didn’t grab hold of the electorate. As I’m writing this, no counter-manifesto’s appeared but let’s not write it off yet. There’s more fun to be had.

 

The Just Folks Department

An interviewer asked Sunak if he was in touch with the struggles of ordinary people and whether he went without anything as a child. Yes, he answered. Sky TV. The nation weeps for him still.

Never mind. He’s tough. He can try again, and did in Devon, where he got down on his haunches and tried to feed a flock of sheep. They ran away.

 Yeah, go on, follow the link. You know you want to.

The Department of Wild Popularity

At a political discussion show, Sunak blamed doctors’ strikes for long NHS waiting times. The audience booed–him, not the doctors. 

*

And finally, when the Conservatives launched their manifesto, the crowd was so thin that they sent minions scurrying around to fold up the chairs so nobody would notice. 

They noticed. 

52 thoughts on “British voters struggle under wave of manifestos as election nears”

  1. Pingback: British voters struggle under wave of manifestos as election nears – On Being Incredibly Quiet

  6. Sunak’s attempts at electioneering are so cringingly awful that they read like satire. The Conservatives put me in mind of the time Ireland sent a puppet to represent them at Eurovision – but in that case what was likely that they didn’t want to risk winning and having to host the next event. Maybe the Tories are simply hoping that any news is good news? Who know if there is even any kind of strategy or if they are just winging it. Badly.

    I am going to be on an extremely tight deadline for receiving my ballot and being able to return it in enough time for it to be counted. So fingers crossed that international mail does me a solid.

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    • Fingers crossed. My recent experiences with the UK – US mail is that it’s been sporadically awful but also sporadically fine. Go figure.

      I can’t even begin to think what the Tory strategy is, or if they’ve had the head space to put one together. It might be fun to set a TV miniseries inside their headquarters.

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  7. Is coffee considered an energy drink ? Or an extra strong “cuppa” ? Could be a problem.

    I did indeed follow the sheep link. Over here the sheep seem to be running toward Trump . Interestingly, Trump also has a manifesto, called “The 2025 Plan”‘, which is reminiscent of those old-timey manifestos of Joe Stalin and Mao-Tse-Dong.

    As I read Pict’s post, it struck me that when she wrote “Ireland sent a puppet to represent them at Eurovision” – which I take is some sort of TV venue – I didn’t know if she meant a token figure, or a literal puppet…like Howdy Doody. Given the Irish sense of humor (yes I am part Irish too) a Muppet might have been good too.

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  8. I’d say a “Murder of Manifestos” but that would be an insult to crows who are much more organized in large groups.

    This was a good roundup for me to get a better understanding of the elections there in Britian, although I can see well enough from WAAAAY over here that Sunak is flopping about. Love the “Potholes build character” bit, my hometown seems to think so.

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    • One late winter, the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked for nominations for the biggest (or maybe it was best) pothole. The winner was something along the lines of “It’s so big that when we hit it I went into labor. And I’m not pregnant.” I’d cite that as evidence that if they don’t build character, they do at least build a great sense of humor.

      I do think “murder” is taken, and my impression is that crows aren’t big on sharing.

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  9. Given the amount of time I’m prepared to put into this ‘competition’, the best I can come up with is a ‘muchness of manifestos’. It’s not great, but if I even have to award myself the damn prize…

    Very funny article as usual, and the vision of Sunak squatting hopefully in front of a flock of disinterested sheep with a bucket of food will stay with me. It’s just so apt.

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    • You can almost feel sorry for Sunak.

      Almost.

      Okay, I overstated that. Perfect metaphor, though.

      A muchness of manifestos is pretty damn good. Several others have been fitting, but it’s the first one that’s made me laugh.

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      • If it made you laugh, Ellen, my work here is done! It’s a modest repayment for all the laughs you’ve given me since I started following your blog. It’s better than I first thought, with the two meanings: samey and just too much. I’d order myself a nice silver cup on a plinth for my trophy cabinet. I’ll order a trophy cabinet while I’m at it.

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  10. I’m confused about how the whole process works. People vote for members of Parliament, and whichever party has the most representatives then elects the Prime Minister? How long does that take?

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    • Close but no cigar. People vote for an MP for their area and the party with the majority installs their party leader as prime minister. And since they picked their leader long before the election, we already know what’s in the package before they take off the wrappings.

      If no party has a majority, then everyone scampers around trying to form a coalition. The trick is to put together a coalition that has a majority.

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  12. “Manifestos” sounds just wrong, reminds of “asbestos”. I think the plural should be manifesta, or simply manifests.
    It could be a “gaggle of manifests”, a “horde” maybe, “deceit” and “murder” come to mind.

    And there is our old friend Nigel too, happily licking any part of Vlad he can reach : Aynthing will be better under PM F. ! He’ll reactivate Boris too – hey what a hoot !

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    • Save us! Save us!

      Hmm. A deceit of manifestos. It’s good. It’s good. It closes out, unfortunately, the possibility of an honest one slipping into the pile, thin as that chance is lately. But it has a certain tang and usefulness–and it marches into a bit of useful linguistic territory that I’m not enough of a linguist to have a name for–the one it shares with “murder of crows,” which takes a noun that doesn’t already imply “a lot” and has it, somehow, implying it.

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      1. To my best knowledge this word can be found in many (all ?) foreign (= non-German) languages, with the same meaning.

      2. I hold the strong belief that any thinking person at one point in their life, depending on the admittedly difficil equilibrium of the factors fear, exhaustion, and intoxication, accepts kindergarten as the definition of the world, and all.
        A kind of lowest common denominator.

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  13. Oh dear, Ellen. I’m deliberately paying very little attention this time around. I would normally worry about anyone’s mental health who is paying close attention, unless, as in your case, it comes with a sense of humour. The collective noun for manifestos? Hmm. A dollop? Dare I be negative and say an excrescence? Anyway, as usual, you are the go-to source for common sense. You’d get my vote any time.

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    • I’m grateful to have your vote. I’m not running–aggressively not running. As for manifestos, a dollop is too small, I think. An excrescence might work, especially since it’s one of those words that (and I’m entirely rationally judging the English-speaking world by own fully representative self) those of us who know it recognize that it’s not a compliment without being able to get our thoughts around why. What could be more fitting?

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  14. I’m confused. At every election, I vote for a party that promises me that it will fix “Broken Britain”, even the one in power (that presumably broke it in the first place). Sometimes that party that I vote for even gets in … yet here we are again! What am I doing wrong?

    Regards, Chris.

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    • Hmm. Interesting question. It implies that if we get the answer to that, we can fix this mess. It also implies that it’s all your fault. Chris, we really need to get this right this time, and clearly it’s up to you. I’ll consult soothsayers, oracles, and political pundits and get back to you as soon as possible. If that’s not soon enough–the election’s coming up on us quickly–please, vote carefully.

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  16. How about referring to a group of manifestos as a bevy? Then summaries like this one can be dubbed b-lines, as in “All I know about the upcoming British election I learned from Ellen Hawley’s latest b-line.” [A true statement.]

    In the U.S., the term manifesto isn’t used much unless you’re putting together a grand scheme that involves mailing bombs to university professors in an effort to bring about world harmony.

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    • Odd, isn’t it, that manifesto’s such a common word in Britain and so rarified in the US. I lived most of my life in the US and the only time I can remember seeing the word used was in the Communist Manifesto. Then I moved to Britain and discovered that they’re everywhere, and they’re not necessarily the products of long thought. (See, if you will, the Reform Party manifesto, which–the newspapers give me the impression–was thought out over a long, boozy lunch, or the now outdated Monster Raving Loony Party manifesto.)

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  17. I forgot about the Communist Manifesto. When I see the word, I think of the Unabomber who sent his 35,000 word screed on the downfall of our industrial society to the NYT and Washington Post—making a fair number of valid points I might add.

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    • I’ll confess to never having read it, but I do know how valid points can lead to invalid actions. It takes some courage, I think, to look acknowledge the validity in the face of what he did.

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