Pick and mix politicians should spare us detailed manifestos

Although it has being going on for months, the UK’s General Election campaign doesn’t officially start until next week. I doubt I’ll be alone in wishing it was all over already but just as many people seem excited by the prospect. However, something I won’t be doing this time is giving much attention to the various political party manifestos, the magazine-style documents the political parties publish detailing their policy platforms. These used to offer a guide to who to vote for but seem far less meaningful in an era of ‘pick and mix’ coalition politics.

While manifestos have always represented the outcome of ideological horse-trading within parties they usually contain some degree of internal policy coherence. But compromise between parties effectively destroys this. The 2010 General Election, for example, produced a Coalition with a programme for government that didn’t appear in either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat party manifestos. Nobody voted for the policy mix subsequently pursued and we’ll never know if the quickly cobbled together package of measures has produced superior economic and social outcomes to what would have occurred if the Conservatives had governed alone as a minority administration. Either way, however, the possibility of another hung Parliament and thus some kind of post-Election arrangement between one or more parties makes it harder to take manifestos in the traditional sense at face value.

In my view political parties should only publish detailed manifestos if they also rule out a formal coalition or some other informal post-electoral pact in the event of a hung Parliament. Otherwise parties should simply issue a short statement of overall intent – akin to an organisational mission statement – along with a clear list of red line policies they would either not deviate from or not sign-up to following any post-Election agreement with other parties.

Politicians who wish to garner public trust should demonstrate that they are more interested in policy than politics. The best way to lose trust is to stand for office on a detailed policy agenda merely to ditch this once the votes have been counted.