Labour's emerging manifesto

Well, Labour's promises seem to include:

• creating a mandatory 32-hour working week,
• increasing the minimum wage to £10 ph,
• abolishing prescription charges,
• boosting spending on health and education (of course),
• offering free personal care to anyone over sixty five that needs it,
• abolishing university fees,
• increasing marginal rates of tax for the 'very rich' (not sure about the threshold).

These are pretty attractive policies, in my opinion, and certainly outbid the Tories, who are offering a bit more spending on NHS and police and tweaking the thresholds on NI and tax (for the higher rate) and cutting stamp duty.

All these proposals represent a loss of freedom in a libertarian sense, but the 32-hour proposal is most blatantly about the state acting to make it illegal for two parties to enter into a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement. I expand on this idea in another blog post.