So what about the Lib-Dems?

What to make of the Lib-Dems? The only major party (if you can still call them that) with a sane policy on Brexit but with a manifesto that makes it hard to imagine their being elected.

Brexit: A second referendum once the terms are clear. This one’s a no-brainer really, as the other parties will probably discover when the time comes. The problem is likely to be that, while the Lib-Dems can continue to call for it, someone else will actually need to do it. What they haven’t been able to do is  create a credible rallying point for Remainers. Had they done so, they might have been in line for government instead of trying to become the ‘official opposition’.

The big headline for the Lib-Dems, once Europe is out of the way is the extra penny on tax.  This sounds as realistic an approach as any to the problems of social care and the NHS but it’s hard to imagine the voters volunteering to pay when  Labour are promising that only rich people will and the Tories want to send the bill to the dead.

Lib-Dem proposals for the NHS and Social Care broadly seem good. They want to integrate the two systems and making the raising and monitoring of spending on health and care transparent seems to make sense, as much because they aren’t promising a disruptive revolution as for any other reason.

Like the other parties, the Lib-Dems want to focus on education. They’re very precise on what they want to do for school and pre-school education, less so for universities (‘a review of higher education finance …   to consider any necessary reforms) and adult education (‘aim to meet all basic skill needs … by 2030’).

On the economy, the Lib-Dems make some excellent points in criticising the Tory record since 2015. The Tories ‘risk the long term future …   by limiting vital spending on infrastructure ad creating an over-reliance on consumer spending fuelled by debt’. Their own proposals are less earth-shaking - ‘major capital investment’ and elimination of the deficit, together with more taxes collected more effectively. There are also proposals to make pay more transparent, to promote worker participation and ownership, and for regional development and devolution.

There’s some well-intentioned stuff on the Green agenda – home insulation, low carbon energy and ‘green jobs’, waste reduction and better use of resources. A whole chapter deals with supporting families and communities –  free  child care, house building, young person’s bus discounts, devolution, culture and sport.

The Lib-Dems are also focussing on some of their traditional values of openness and internationalism. They want to roll back the state, improve crime, policing and the sentencing system, be open to the world, accept refugees more readily, contribute to aid and international efforts. They would like proportional representation (of course) and more devolution at national and local levels.

As always with the Lib-Dems, one gets the feeling that their heart’s in the right place. They mean well but the overall impression from reading the manifesto is that they lack clarity and focus. There isn’t a clear single message and, even on Brexit, this is very much a rearguard action.

What they should have done was to say clearly that, if elected with a majority, they would pull the plug on Brexit. Constitutionally, in the UK, parliament is the final authority and a general election trumps a referendum, so they would have been within their rights and, if every Remainer voted Lib-Dem and the Brexiteers split between Labour and Tory, they would have won.

That isn’t where we are, though. As things stand, it looks as if any substantial Lib-Dem resurgence is a pipe dream. A vote for the Lib-Dems may well turn out a protest vote and a protest vote is a wasted vote.

Does Labour perhaps have the answer?

Has anyone else actually tried reading the manifestos before a general election? Nightmare stuff. And I’ve still to look at the Tories who – when one clicks on the first download button – just give you the introduction.

So, Labour: the longest at 97 pages* and – as when they nominated Corbyn as leader – something that asks us to look seriously at the alternative to the Thatcher/Blair consensus that’s been the received wisdom of the last thirty five years.

From a Brexit point of view, this manifesto says very little – I get the impression that they don’t care much about it, one way or the other, and their only reason for including it is to keep the votes of Brexiteers. Most of what they say amounts to continuing with the EU outside the EU – fair rules on immigration, minimising barriers to trade, keeping existing protections of workers’ rights. They spend only eight pages on it in the manifesto and “reject ‘no deal’ as a viable option.”

For the rest, all except fifteen pages is about promises to dedicate resources: to citizens rights (26 pages, workers – 6, social security – 4, housing – 5, devolution – 5, diversity – 6) leading richer lives (13 pages on local services, transport, the environment, animal welfare, culture, media and  sport), education (9  pages), the NHS, Security Services and Foreign Policy (8 pages each).

Fifteen pages go to the economy. There are proposals on investment in education, transport, sustainable energy, broadband infrastructure and the regions. There are tax breaks for small businesses and (in the workers’ rights section) a 20:1 maximum pay ratio in the public sector and in companies bidding for public contracts.

The big departure is the increase in state participation in the economy with ‘public ownership’ of rail, energy and water supplies and restructuring of the creation of a national investment bank based, by the look of it on the publicly owned part of RBS.

What about voting for Labour, then? A lot of what they propose, everyone would want to have and a lot of it is in the other manifestos as well. What’s not to like about education, security, living better, the NHS and so on? They also promise a much more cautious approach to Brexit than the Tories.

The big risk, on the other hand is the bet on the state to run the economy. We know this is possible in theory because Mrs Thatcher proved it. When faced with clear, unambiguous objectives, the managers of publicly owned businesses in the run-up to privatisation showed they could be as efficient as anyone else.

In practice, unfortunately, this seems unlikely to be how things will work out. Under public ownership, in the sixties and seventies, the difficult decisions necessary to remain competitive were impossible. Too many vested interests were in play and the political process never managed to resolve them in time. The small pains of gradual change were avoided until the catastrophe of the Thatcher Tory regime became inevitable.

Also, they are not clear what the future of Britain’s international financial services industry would be.  Financial Services exports accounts for some 13% of GDP (2014 numbers) and restructuring to focus on domestic banking might impact that.

To sum up, then, lots of attractive promises, a slightly less gung-ho approach to Brexit and a significant risk of having politicians strangle industry. Will it be a good idea to vote Labour this week?

* Net of covers, table of contents etc.