The Labour Party was created by a coalition of different groups. The biggest one was the working class both as individuals and collectively as trade unions. It has never forgotten this. The interests of the workers when it was formed was for greater equality. Equality is also a goal of anybody, from whatever background, who favours fairness. There is a lot of common ground between people who favour equality on the grounds of social justice and people who favour equality on the basis of self interest - we live in an unequal society where a small number of people own a big chunk of the wealth so most of us would be better off if it were more equal. But nonetheless, wanting things to be fair isn't the same as wanting to be better off.
This mismatch has given the opponents of the Labour Party a lot of fun over the years when . If you are poor your desire for equality can be portrayed as jealousy. If you are rich you can be called a hypocrite for not giving it away. Both tropes can be easily countered, but by the time you have done that you are on the back foot and are having to justify not just your political position but also your personal behaviour.
This is a bit of a tricky area for the Labour Party when it comes to manifesto time. Do you appeal to people's pockets or their consciences? So usually this is not an issue that the Labour Party wants to talk about too much.
Not this time.
The section on tackling poverty and inequality represents a programme that on its own would have a radical government missing tea breaks and coming in over the weekend. This isn't tinkering around the edges - this is a major change to the way employment works in this country. The details are interesting and worthy of considering, but there take home message is that British workers are going to be well paid, secure, organised and expensive. This is pretty much the opposite of what governments have been trying to do for the last thirty years. It is also the direction in which we need to go. You can't have the kind of lifestyle we currently enjoy by competing with low paid workers around an increasingly well connected world. Even if you could, it still might not work because you'd also be competing with new technology at the same time. The good news is that there are whole new areas of opportunity opening up. If we want to succeed we are going to need to be creative and above all highly productive.
I don't know if Labour's plans will work. Nobody does. But it does seem to me that we need something along these lines. Long hours and low pay aren't good for workers, but they aren't good for productivity either. Discriminating against women, minorities and the disabled are likewise bad in themselves but also own goals if we take into account that anyone can come up with a world beating idea. We've no way of knowing what colour, orientation or gender the next J.K.Rowling will be. They may not even be here yet, so Labour's positive attitude to migration is another potential source of growth.
It is also good to see Labour putting housing in with the equality section. It's an issue that is an Achilles heal for our economy and one that needs looking at.
Constitutional issues get lumped in here too. Again, this is absolutely the right thing to do. Regional inequality is a big and serious issue, and again one whose solution brings about benefits for the country as a whole.
This section sneaks in one of the few bits of low politics into an otherwise very idealistic document. The last line is a promise to allow a further Scottish independence referendum - but not straight away. My interpretation is that some agreement has been come to between Labour and the Scots Nats. I'd prefer the United Kingdom to stay united personally, but I don't think this would put me off voting Labour. Not on its own anyway. I am avoiding the news to concentrate on the manifestos so I don't know if this has been picked up by the media. But I'd imagine it would be a handy stick for the Tories to beat Labour with.
In summary - I like what Labour is saying, and most of their policies are at least defendable and most are positive contributions to the British economy. But there is a lot of them. I buy the direction of travel. I am not sure how quickly it can all be delivered.
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