Politics

Miliband’s Manifesto

13 April 2015

By Lauren E. White

Today the Labour Party launched their election manifesto in which their leader, Ed Miliband, stood at a podium in front of journalists, his team of other Labour party members and people who wanted to see what he had to offer. After the shocker that Miliband had other girlfriends before his wife hit the front pages of tabloids, it seemed that the Party Leader was more animated and passionate than ever as he announced Labour’s pledges to the British people.

The first pledge Mr Miliband made was that he would balance the books and cut the deficit. Miliband claimed that he had a ‘fully-funded’ plan to do so and was evidently confident that he could definitely get the job done. This is evidenced in the daring move to put the pledge of balancing the books on the very front of Labour’s manifesto – a promise that, if the party does take control of the country, they will be held to for the whole five-year term.

Continuing on from the pledge of balancing the books and cutting the deficit, Miliband set in stone that he would be doing something that ‘no other Government has ever done for 200 years’ and that would be abolishing the non-domicile rule. This would mean that people who live in this country, work in this country and send their kids to school in this country could no longer avoid paying tax and would have to contribute their fair share like everyone else. Miliband seemed to almost come to life during this pledge, claiming the next Labour Government would ‘crack down’ on tax avoidance in order to support balancing the books. As well as this, Miliband added that he would ban ‘exploitative’ zero-hours contracts and raise the minimum wage to over eight pounds per hour in order to give working people a better standard of living.

Miliband then moved swiftly on to the topic he is perhaps most comfortable with: the NHS. He talked about how the Labour Party will fund the NHS properly once again and slammed David Cameron’s treatment regarding it. Stating that ‘you can’t fund the NHS on IOUs’ prompted a roar from the crowd in front of him and rounds of applause from the audience. As well as his passion for the NHS, Miliband showed a sliver of it for education too, adding that it needs to be ‘protected’.

Towards the end of the manifesto speech, Miliband talked about the young people of the country and the future. Talking a lot about ‘change’ and how it will come prompted more cheering from the audience. But the Labour leader then decided that he would drop a bombshell saying that it’s ‘time 16 and 17 year-olds had the chance to have their voice heard’ and vowed to give them the vote if Labour won in the election.

When Ed Miliband closed his speech, he spoke about how he is ‘proud to be Leader of the Labour Party’ and showed the audience and his colleagues that he was ‘grateful’ for their support of him since he became Leader almost five years ago. He went on to saying that the stakes are ‘incredibly high’ and told Labour Party members that the work they will do in the next three weeks is so important in helping Labour win the election on May 7th.

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