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Thread: My new @OUPAcademic book Age of Promises: Electoral Promises in Twentieth Century Britain, written with @RichardToye is being published next month (despite the title it considers British political culture from Gladstone to Covid)..../1
Age of Promises considers the role of pledge-making and how it has shaped the British way of doing politics. We look at manifestos and election addresses (the key forum for making promises) and consider how their changing format shaped what was promised and how it was promised./2
In the C19th- Gladstone + Disraeli broke new ground in regularly issuing a manifesto at each election. However, there was no expectation it would provide a detailed outline of policy. Candidates' addresses could look at other topics or give them different emphases /3
Addresses often focused on the candidate's character. So, when Dadabhai Naoroji stood for Holborn (1886) he made a point of not discussing Indian reform and emphasised his fitness to stand, noting 'to many of you I am a man of strange name and race'/ 4
Labour broke new ground by centring each election campaign around a manifesto which outlined a programme for reform (although early manifestos were often a short series of bullet points). Manifestos sought to demonstrate Labour's credibility to govern/ 5
Nonetheless, there was widespread distrust with the growth of programmatic politics, which was presented by its opponents as a bait to trap gullible electors or promote extravagant spending/ 6
The 1945 election marked a landmark in promoting the idea that an election manifesto created a 'mandate' for government action. New media like TV broadcasts created new ways to promote party programmes/ 7
However, by the 1960s there were widespread criticisms that parties were 'over-promising'. Challenger parties developed alternative appeals rooted in regional, community politics, giving the election address a new lease of life/ 8
Both Thatcher and Blair can be seen as seeking to capitalise on popular frustration with 'manifestoitis'. Thatcher through making a point of not not 'over-promising' in 1979 and Blair through centring 1997 around a small number of pledges/ 9
The pledge card sought to make the key election promises into a 'contract' with Blair, which could easily be assessed at a later date (it was designed to fit into a wallet)/ 10
There is nothing new about public cynicism towards political promises. However, the expansion of referendums has created a new uncertainty about the status of manifesto pledges. Can these commitments be overturned as a result of the 'popular will'?/ 11
In 2017 Theresa May called an election 3 months after announcing her commitment to leave the EU Single Market (the 2015 Conservative manifesto had supported continued Single Market membership)/ 12
The future status of manifestos is uncertain. Increasingly they are seen as a 'banana skin' which can derail a campaign (as May found out in 2017 with the dementia tax). Corbyn was criticised in 2019 for offering a diffuse series of reform proposals (as was Labour in the 30s) /13
'Get Brexit Done', the 2019 Conservative manifesto, was noticeably short on policy details. In light of ongoing Covid uncertainty- will the public expect the detailed costings which became a feature of British manifestos in the C20th? /END
