A month ahead of polling day, the Labour party is scrambling to manage its message after someone leaked a draft version of its 2017 election manifesto, the day before a final version was to be agreed by the party’s leadership.
The draft includes pledges to scrap tuition fees and nationalise part of the energy market. The party also looks to be avoiding taking a hard line on immigration, despite pressure from some of its supporters, and it doesn’t want to leave the European Union without a Brexit deal.
In the second episode of the Election Weekly podcast guests Paula Keaveney from Edge Hill University and Stuart McAnulla from the University of Leeds join The Conversation UK’s politics editor Laura Hood to size up the promises and predict which are likely to make it into the final version of the manifesto – as well as pondering who might be behind the leak.
Before Labour stole the headlines, the main story of the week seemed a little silly. Here was prime minister Theresa May sitting on a BBC sofa with her husband, talking about household chores (and the fact that there are “boy and girl jobs” in the May household). We learned who takes out the bins and that Mr May likes a nice jacket. But for all its mundanity, this appearance on the One Show was revealing about who the prime minister wants you to think she is – and what she believes.
Find out more about why manifestos matter by reading our brief history of these all important documents.
And while it looks like the Conservatives are still on course for a major victory in this election, we’ve been hearing about why a very large majority in the House of Commons isn’t always a gift to a government.
Election Weekly is a podcast series from The Conversation UK running once a week in the run-up to the UK general election on June 8. Music in the show is Chasin’ It, by Jason Shaw. A big thank you to City University London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios.