5 takeaways from Labour’s ‘Captain Caution’ manifesto

LONDON — Imagine having a poll lead so vast, your manifesto can boast £2.5 billion in “spare” tax rises that you haven’t spent.

That was Keir Starmer’s gambit — his closest thing to the surprise “rabbits” he detests — as Labour’s leader launched an offer to British voters that he hopes won’t upset his 23-point poll lead over the Tories.

Starmer chose the Co-Op HQ in Manchester, the same place he launched his “five missions” 476 days ago. Details have been filled in since then, but the overall strategy has not changed. “That plan stands,” he said, “because it’s the right plan.”

With Labour out of power for 14 years, the party has spent years working up its policy offer in a grinding internal bureaucracy. As a result, the 136-page manifesto is packed with policy.

The finished article, Starmer argued, is a long-term plan to “change Britain” and restore duty and service. Almost none of it is new to journalists but it will be to the public, and parts are still radical, seemingly impossibly so. Take decarbonizing the electricity grid by 2030, building 1.5 million homes including on the green belt, and hiring more teachers, tax investigators, planning officers, police and mental health staff.

But Starmer’s rhetoric about repairing a broken state is, experts argue, undermined by an almost total lack of tax hikes to pay for it. They say his manifesto inherits Tory fiscal plans that bake in cuts, won’t allow the state to grow back and mean his plans won’t add up.

Instead Starmer argues he can get away from the “defeatist” levers of tax and spend and rely on growth — just like ill-fated Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss tried to do.

POLITICO looks at five takeaways from the document below, and you can read our full detailed policy tracker here.

1) Change without change

With a presidential-style photo of Starmer, the manifesto’s front page beams out one word: “Change.”

There’s change planned from 14 years of Tory government, undeniably. But from that government’s overall fiscal approach? Not so much. 

Labour promises £4.8 billion a year in new revenue spending compared to now, much less than the £17 billion of tax cuts in the Tory manifesto (although Labour insists its plans are more credible.)

Starmer insisted his overall vision amounts to “more than a list of policies.” Yet “stability is change” is also his election mantra — it sounds Orwellian until you clock that he’s comparing himself to a party that had three prime ministers since 2022.

With a presidential-style photo of Starmer, the manifesto’s front page beams out one word: “Change.” | Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

At the launch, Starmer was asked: “Is this a Captain Caution manifesto designed to protect your poll lead?” No, he insisted. “I’m running as a candidate to be PM, not a candidate to run the circus.”

This stability claim does not just differentiate Starmer from the Tories. He also needs it to show Tory middle England he’s not his left-wing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. A brief protest during his speech allowed Starmer to riff on this, holding up a manifesto that pledges to “drag my party away from the dead end of gesture politics.” 

2) Caution on tax rises

The manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, National Insurance, VAT or corporation tax, and is silent on whether it would raise several others.

That means the revenue-raisers that remain are sparse, at £7.35 billion a year — plus a £1.2 billion oil and gas windfall tax, which is allocated to capital investment. BBC Verify’s Ben Chu puts that at just 0.2 percent of GDP.

In full, Labour’s promising to net £5.23 billion from reducing tax avoidance and closing loopholes on taxing people with non-domiciled status; £1.51 billion by putting VAT and business rates on private school fees; £565 million from closing a loophole on “carried interest” for private equity fund managers; and £40 million from raising stamp duty by 1 percent for foreign homebuyers.

So cautious are the tax rises that, as mentioned above, they leave a £2.5 billion cushion if Labour gets into government — as only £4.83 billion of revenue spending has been allocated from them. “This is a prudent approach,” the manifesto says. Caution to the max.

3) Tanks on Liz Truss’s lawn (no, really)

One striking similarity appears between Labour’s plan and that of 49-day Tory PM Liz Truss. Labour’s relying on growth, albeit to raise money for public services in future. (In Truss’ case, it was for tax cuts immediately).

Starmer was asked how he will balance the books if anything goes wrong — cut services, raise taxes, or borrow? His dismissed this “defeatist approach … that the only levers are tax and spend.”

“It’s a plan for growth,” added Starmer. Truss’s mini-Budget, which crashed markets and brought her down as PM in 2022, was called “The Growth Plan.”

Beyond growth, the manifesto follows Labour’s strategy of parking tanks on every Tory lawn it can find, seizing center ground voters while demoralized Conservatives flirt with the right. It promises to “make work pay,” be “pro-business and pro-worker” and be the “party of wealth creation.”

National security appears early on, as do photos of Starmer with troops and Ukraine’s PM Volodymyr Zelenskyy — at the D-Day commemorations which PM Rishi Sunak missed. That’ll hurt.

One striking similarity appears between Labour’s plan and that of 49-day Tory PM Liz Truss. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

4) Some clarity on policy

For all the careful build-up to Labour’s big reveal, there are still some elements that emerged only on manifesto day or just before.

The document says Labour would recognize a Palestinian state “as a contribution to a renewed peace process” — meaning recognition from the U.K. could come before a full and final peace settlement with Israel.

Borrowing for Labour’s green investment plans has risen £4.6 billion since the last estimate to £17.5 billion over five years, as a windfall tax on oil and gas giants will raise less than hoped.

The manifesto unveils a pledge to force privately-rented homes to reach a key energy efficiency standard (EPC standard C) by 2030, after the government dropped plans to get there by 2028. But a plan to upgrade other homes was scaled back, to 5 million over five years.

A ban on almost all MPs’ second jobs — a source of public anger in the U.K. after a string of scandals — appears to have been watered down, instead banning only “paid advisory or consultancy roles” immediately, with a consultation to look at what comes next.

Members of the House of Lords would be banned after a parliament in which they turn 80, along with 92 hereditary peers. But a previous pledge to replace Britain’s unelected upper chamber entirely is kicked into the long grass with a consultation.

5) There’s a whole lot more missing

Starmer promised “hard choices” to “reform our economy and public services” — but the toughest ones seem pretty absent.

As Westminster expected, the manifesto does nothing to rule out future rises in capital gains tax, wealth taxes or a host of other taxes. Indeed, income tax thresholds will remain frozen until 2028, a tax rise on working people in disguise and in line with Tory plans.

Taxes are only pledged to be “as low as possible,” not to be falling. The manifesto promises “billions of pounds” would be saved from clearing the U.K.’s asylum claims backlog, but does not score this into its fiscal plans.

Conservatives have seized on this. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said under Labour, “taxes will rise to levels never before seen in this country” (because they’re already at a record high).

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a nonpartisan think tank, said Labour’s tax rises and public spending rises alike are “tiny, going on trivial” with “almost nothing” on spending — despite deep problems with child poverty, homelessness, social care, council finances, pensions and more.

There is vagueness too in some foreign policy. On China, Labour says it would “co-operate where we can” but “compete where we need to and challenge where we must.”

That one, no doubt, will be filled in by realpolitik down the line.