A manifesto is a political document launched by a party before a general election. This manifesto sets out the policies the party would introduce in government if they won the election. This document also seeks to contextualize the party’s proposed policy choices in a bid to gain support from the electorate.

Writing the manifesto

Political parties prepare their manifestos in different ways. Labour and the Liberal Democratsfollow formal consultative and committee procedures set out in their party constitutions in order to produce their manifestos. Labour, for instance, ensures that all the key groups on the National Executive Committee (NEC) - the parliamentary Labour party, the trade unions, constituency Labour parties and affiliated societies - have a role in shaping the document. Furthermore, Clause 5 of the Labour party constitution stipulates that the party’s stakeholders have to formally agree the manifesto at a special NEC meeting. The Conservative manifesto drafting process, on the other hand, is not set out in the party constitution and so the Tory document is developed in a less formal way, which gives the Conservative leader and the central party organization considerable control over the content.

Election timing effectively determines how long parties have to produce their manifestos. Snap elections, for example, shorten the time period available for drafting and finalizing the document. It has been reported that, before the last general election, Keir Starmer, no doubt mindful of this issue, instructed his Labour shadow teams to contribute policy proposals for the party manifesto by 8 February 2024.

The manifesto and the election campaign

Party manifestos are normally launched at an organized media event during the election campaign, about three weeks before polling day. Labour and the Tories coordinate to ensure that their manifestos are not published on the same day to maximize media coverage of their policy proposals (though this happened by mistake in 1997). Although very few voters actually read party manifestos in detail, these documents can influence voters by providing headline policy pledges or slogans and shaping media narratives during the campaign.

For the party involved, the manifesto attempts to convey core policies and messages to win over voters during the election campaign. Labour’s 1945 manifesto and the Tory 1979 manifesto helped to secure electoral victory for their respective parties with their visions of a radical break with the past. New Labour’s 2001 and 2005 manifestos helped Tony Blair’s party return to office with their emphasis on public sector reform and the Tory focus on the ‘Big Society’ in the party’s 2010 manifesto helped David Cameron become prime minister.

Having said this, manifestos in recent decades have also been littered with damaging hostages to fortune which subsequently undermined the party concerned. Labour’s 1983 election manifesto contributed to the party’s heavy defeat and was scathingly dismissed as the ‘longest suicide note in history’ because it endorsed unpopular policy proposals such as nationalization and unilateral nuclear disarmament. The Tory 1987 manifesto contained a commitment to introduce the community charge or ‘poll tax’, a policy that proved to be so unpopular it helped to topple Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Furthermore, in 2010, the Liberal Democrats made a manifesto pledge to scrap university tuition fees but reneged on this commitment after entering into a coalition government with the Tories. As a result, Nick Clegg’s party was punished severely for this ‘betrayal’ at the 2015 general election. During the 2017 election campaign, Theresa May suffered the indignity of having to change her policy proposals on social care after a public and media backlash against the Tories’ so-called ‘dementia tax’.

Costing manifestos

Partisan assessments by the parties and sections of the media of the financial costs of implementing the pledges in election manifestos are a key feature of the election campaign. Parties issue their own costings, as do think tanks such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but currently there is no government department or public body that provides an independent financial analysis of election manifestos. During the election campaign, civil servants consult the manifestos to plan for a variety of election outcomes and prepare for the likely policy programme the winning party will want to pursue.

The manifesto and government

Once elected, a government is under no statutory obligation to honour its manifesto pledges but, in reality, there are several compelling reasons to do so, including (1) public expectations generated by policy proposals during the campaign (2) policy-making is often linked to manifesto commitments to demonstrate consistency, and (3) at the next election campaign, the government is usually keen to show that it has delivered on its previous pledges.Moreover, manifestos play a quasi-constitutional role in securing the passage of government legislation through the House of Lords, due to the Salisbury Convention. The latter, which was formulated during the 1945-51 Labour government, states that the Lords should not vote down government legislative proposals that were included in the winning party’s election manifesto. Critics have argued that the Salisbury Convention should not apply if (1) the government fails to win a majority at a general election (for example the 2017-19 minority Tory administration) since its manifesto pledges failed to attract majority support, and (2) the election produces a coalition government, as in 2010, because the electorate had not voted for this type of administration nor its policy programme.

It is also important to note that not all manifesto pledges become government policy. Some fall by the wayside because they prove to be too difficult to implement in office and others are shelved due to changing circumstances that compel the government of the day to reassess its priorities (e.g. the Covid-19 pandemic which began in 2020). Elections that produce coalition or minority governments often lead to parties having to compromise on their manifesto commitments. When the Liberal Democrats entered into a coalition government with the Conservatives, they abandoned their pre-election proposal to end university tuition fees and, with their new Tory partners, endorsed a policy to triple these fees. In addition, governments implement policies which are not included in their election manifesto, such as New Labour’s decision to make the Bank of England operationally independent, which was announced less than a week after the 1997 election.

A changing document

Since the end of the Second World War, manifestos have changed significantly. In 1945, they were relatively short documents of between 3000 and 6000 words but, over time, they have become considerably longer. In 2024, for example, the Labour manifesto contained over 26,000 words and ran to 136 pages and the Tory manifesto was a 13,700 word document spread over 78 pages. More recent manifestos also tend to include a larger number of commitments. The 1945 Labour manifesto, for instance, offered a mere seven specific pledges. In contrast, the corresponding 2019 Labour and Tory documents both itemized over 160.