A general election will take place in the UK on 8th June 2017 and the main parties have issued their Manifestos.
Copies of the manifestos can be found as follows (in alphabetical order):
Conservatives
https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto
Greens
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/green-guarantee/
Labour
http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/manifesto2017
Liberal Democrats
http://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto
Scottish National Party (SNP)
UKIP
http://www.ukip.org/manifesto2017
It is unclear how many people actually spend the time to trawl through these documents. The Conservative manifesto weighs in at around 88 pages, Labour covers around 128 pages and the Liberal Democrats at around 100 pages. Far better would be a document of 1 or 2 pages summarising the “claims” of what they intend to do if elected as the governing party.
Once in power, these documents are not always followed depending on the prevailing wind at the time. Items often being conveniently dropped if it doesn’t actually suit the actual aims of the party (or parties) in power. In addition they can used to claim that they (the party) have a mandate to implement unpopular or controversial decisions as they were elected on the basis of their manifestos.
