If a week is a long time in politics, two weeks in an election campaign is a lifetime.
A lot has happened since 22 May, when a bedraggled Rishi Sunak fired the starting gun on a general election campaign in the pouring rain outside Downing St.
The key battle lines have been drawn up, with the incumbent Conservatives pinning their hopes of a comeback on tax cuts and security, and Labour opting to focus on a change through stability message.
Senior MPs have been engaging in a whole manner of stunts that have ranged from the unedifying to the amusing in order to court the attention a disinterested and apathetic general public.
Even the perfunctory series of TV debates is underway, with Tuesday’s frosty ITV face-off between Starmer and Sunak complete and a five-way contest hitting screens on Friday (7) evening.
The one major piece of the jigsaw yet to be in place is the parties’ much-anticipated manifestos.
The political credos will add meat to the bones of the garbled promises and half-truths that have thus far plagued the election campaign and represent the first opportunity to see the scale of each party’s ambition in the round.
They have the potential to make or—as with Jeremy Corbyn’s profligate 2019 offering—break a campaign and can precipitate exactly the sort of immediate shift in momentum that a Conservative Party 20 points behind in the polls desperately requires.
When will the Labour manifesto be published?
Labour is expected to publish its manifesto as soon as next Thursday (13 June). Rumours are that the party has identified a swing seat in the north of England in an attempt to demonstrate its concern for the red wall voters that it lost to devastating consequences in 2019.
Before that, around 80 party officials were set to sign off on its contents in what is known as the ‘Clause V’ meeting, according to Politico.
This is believed to be scheduled for today (Friday 7 June), with draconian security expected after Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto was leaked to the Daily Mirror days before its official launch.
What can we expect in the Labour manifesto?
The short answer is not much that we don’t already know if reports are to be believed. It will likely be built around the “Five Missions for Government” that Starmer and his team first back in March, and its foundations will be the more specific ‘First Steps’ for change announced shortly before Sunak called the election.
Flagship policies already announced include the formation of GB Energy, a public owned clean energy company that it hopes will make the UK’s energy mix greener and less dependent on international markets, and instigating 40,000 new hospital appointments to cut NHS waiting lists.
Despite Labour’s regular accusations of being too light on policy, party apparatchiks will want to keep the boat as steady as possible with their manifesto, making a repeat of its policy-heavy 2019 highly unlikely.
When will the Conservative manifesto be published?
The Conservatives’ manifesto launch date has been more tightly guarded. There has been no indication—be that by official leaks or formal invitations—about when the party might have slated the marquee moment of its campaign.
However, according to governance think take the Institute for Government (IfG), both of the main parties’ manifestos tend to have been published before we enter the final two-three weeks of the campaign.
While no date has been set in stone, it is highly likely that it will be released before 16 June.
What will be in the Conservative manifesto?
Unlike Labour, the Tories raced out of the traps with a flurry of big policy announcements. In the time since Sunak called the election, his party has announced a form of national service, cut migrant numbers, and bolstered a version of the pension triple lock.
The party has yet to make any major announcement on tax cuts despite its aggressive—and arguably dishonest—haranguing of Labour’s taxation policy, suggesting something could be held back for the manifesto launch.
The Conservatives may look to abolish National Insurance. In his most recent Spring Budget, Jeremy Hunt stated his “ambition” to do away with the tax.
Still, with questions already mounting over how several of their other policies will be funded, the blockbuster policy may have to be put on the back burner.