Labour
Who is Labour? Labour was created at the start of the 20th century and was heavily involved in trade unions including the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and 94% of their membership in 1900 was from unions. It was formed to represent the working classes at a time they were discredited from the franchise. New Labour has marketed itself as a catch-all party, not limited to the working class. Labour is known as the party that advocates for social inclusion, targeted welfare and pragmatic reforms.
Policies
Here are their most recent, relevant policies regarding several different aspects in our society
Environment
According to their manifesto, they wish to instate new national parks, plant over 1.5 billion trees by 2040, and create at least 20,000 acres of woodland per year to lower CO2 emissions. Also, they would like to work with farmer unions by increasing pay in the agricultural sector to create Net-Zero emissions. In addition, they would instate legally-binding targets in 2030, 2040, and 2050 to help them ensure that we are on track to a carbon-neutral, green society. As an effort in reassuring citizens that they are focused on climate change, in 2021, Labour pledged £28 billion a year to be spent on the climate crisis. The majority of this would be spent on the manufacturing of 'green' alternatives to machines that leave toxic levels of greenhouse gas emissions in our air.
Equality
Presenting itself as a party that advocates for total social inclusion, Labour takes a strong stance against any forms of discrimination. For example, according to their policies, they would eliminate racial inequality in the workplace, increase reporting on the racial pay gap and tackle pay discrimination. They also claimed to want to establish a racial equality unit within the treasury. Another policy would be to help promote teaching positions to people of colour, as the current proportion of ethnic minorities in that profession is staggeringly low. The party claims to never make policies without taking our society's ethnic minority community into consideration. For women, they would make abortions legal, safe, and accessible to every person who would want one and work on extending that right to Northern Ireland. Funding would be increased for domestic violence centres and rape crisis centres across the UK. To work to end pregnany discrimination, the application period will be changed from 3 to 6 months. Labour was the party to equalise the age of consent for LGBTQ+ people by abolishing section 28, now they still advocate for their rights.
The people
According to Labour, it has stated it's goals to improve the lives of young people. One of their key policies to do this would be to lower the voting age to 16 and make voting more accessible with automatic voter registration. They wish to completely abolish tuition fees and reinstate maintanence grants. A new living wage minimum would be introduced for everyone over the age of 16 which would be at least £10. They stated they would create almost 3500 jobs for qualified councellors to guarantee that students can talk to someone.
As for the older generation, they would pledge £10.8 billion towards social care and keep bus passes free for elderly people. They would also attempt to create insulation for every home, cutting energy bills and protecting the inhabitants.
Economy
Labour has stated they wish to stabilise the foundations of our economy. They wish to do this by giving emergency support to businesses which would involve protection for struggling businesses and energy-intensive industries with a £600 million contingency plan. They would also cut business rates for small to medium businesses, however this would involve money being taken by temporarily increasing the digital services tax. In their words, they wish to make Brexit work by solving problems and ensuring Brexit doesn't weaken our European supply chains. They wish to make our economy more resilient by shortening supply chains to the UK.
Education
Labour has stated its intentions to increase funding to schools, and introduce a maximum class size of 30 for every primary school to ensure the quality of teaching for students. They wish to end testing culture by scrapping stage one and two SATs and baseline assessments to focus on pupil progress. They wish to add more enriching subjects such as black history month, the holocaust, and the arts to every school to better educate students about the world. To help students in poverty, free school meals, including breakfast clubs, will be mandatory and they will tackle the rising prices of school uniform. They would make training up to level 3, and 6 years of training up to levels 4-6 free for everyone (level 3 approx. to A-levels and level 6 being approx. a foundation degree).