There is no mention of socialism, in contrast to the nine mentions it gets in But at the manifesto's heart is the same commitment to using government intervention and public money to boost industrial development and create jobs.
In , Labour leader Michael Foot had a five year "emergency programme" to rebuild industry and end mass unemployment. In , Jeremy Corbyn proposes a "a ten-year national investment plan to upgrade Britain's economy".
Both manifestos propose higher taxes on the rich and a crack down on tax avoidance. In , Labour said: "We shall reform taxation so that the rich pay their full share and the tax burden on the lower paid is reduced. The manifesto goes further, proposing "a new annual tax on net personal wealth" to "ensure that the richest , of the population make a fair and proper contribution to tax revenue".
Both manifestos include plans for a National Investment Bank to boost industrial development and support research and development. The version would allow the government to use public money to support long-term, higher-risk investment that the bank's are reluctant to touch. The version of the National Investment Bank is more interventionist. It proposes drawing up development plans with "all leading companies - national and multinational, public and private".
Like the plan, it would provide access to credit, but a Labour government would have the power to "invest in individual companies, to purchase them outright or to assume temporary control". The manifesto also includes a commitment to reintroducing exchange controls, scrapped by the Conservatives in , to "counter currency speculation" and stop capital "flowing overseas".
In , Labour was committed to scrapping Britain's nuclear weapons, saying "we are the only party that offers a non-nuclear defence policy. In , Labour says it supports "the renewal of the Trident submarine system". But, in a possible nod to Jeremy Corbyn's longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons, it adds "any prime minister should be extremely cautious about ordering the use of weapons of mass destruction which would result in the indiscriminate killing of millions of innocent civilians".
Both manifestos stress the need for Britain to work for nuclear disarmament through international bodies. Although the draft manifesto backs Britain's exit from the EU, following last year's referendum result, it is less Eurosceptic in tone than the document. Tony Benn, a stalwart defender of the gains of the working class, is described as a "ruthless destroyer", while Margaret Thatcher is "positively pragmatic" compared with the current government.
Unfortunately the liberal commentariat continues to fear the democratic will of the working classes being given a political voice. The Labour party should fight for the class it was founded to represent. The evidence from the s and today is that the Tories have no shame in fighting for their class of fellow millionaires. Few people would say these things about the Tories now.
In , their almost content-free manifesto, and massive reliance on older voters, were highly effective as election tactics. And even some of the similarities between and are less terrifying for the left than many think. In both contests, Labour struggled against an unexpected surge of nationalism that swept up many of its traditional voters: the triumphalist aftermath of the Falklands war; and the vote for Brexit. In the Tories drew level with Labour among working-class voters, but by the next election Labour was well ahead once more.
In a democracy as prone to changing its mind as Britain, political settlements and orthodoxies never last for ever.
After last week Labour could look for a different path to recovery, acknowledging that the left of the party, for all its failures this time, understands the modern world and the emerging electorate in ways that centrists, at least so far, do not. Cite Cite W. Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Article PDF first page preview. Issue Section:. You do not currently have access to this article. Download all slides.
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