What does Labour’s new ‘campaign guide’ tell us about its policies?

The party’s newly published pamphlet is a frustrating mix of some highly specific initiatives and others that are either vague or raise huge practical questions. Sean O’Grady has read it so you don’t have to...

Given Keir Starmer’s inherent habitual caution, the pamphlet contains some striking hostages to fortune (PA Wire)

Some decades ago, the Conservatives and then New Labour used to produce thick compendiums for their candidates and party workers at general election time. The Conservative Campaign Guide was the model – a volume containing killer stats, quotes, boasts, and attacks on opposition parties and personalities of a kind that would be unlikely to pass a present-day fact check, but proved useful on the doorstep and the stump.

Thick enough to cover every policy area but still compact enough to fit into the pocket of a Barbour jacket, this portable guide was replicated by Tony Blair’s Labour Party, albeit in a “modern” Filofax-style ring binder. Anyway, in a renewed spirit of campaigning professionalism, Labour has now revived the idea, producing a document titled Let’s Get Britain’s Future Back.

Although the new document is much flimsier, in every sense – and of course, thanks to the internet, is easily available to the general public – it might be best thought of as a pilot for the manifesto – and, to mix the metaphor, as the party firing the starting pistol on its “long campaign”.