Free care and four-day weeks: Labour's big, bold, pricey policies

A four-day week, getting rid of private schools, scrapping universal credit, abolishing the schools inspectorate, an end to prescription charges, free care for elderly people and free nursery places for toddlers. These are undoubtedly big, bold policies from a Labour conference on the eve of an election.

Some of them will come with big price tags, but the leadership has made a bet that the public want policies to make their daily lives easier and that they will not be scared off by such dramatic changes if the cost falls on the very wealthiest.

The Labour leadership’s move even further towards radical socialist policies has its roots in the party’s better than expected performance in 2017, when promises to scrap student fees, embark on a mass social housing programme and renationalise the railways polled well among swing voters. Tory attempts to characterise them as 1970s throwbacks did not appear to work with younger voters, with Labour now going further in trying to rehabilitate the message of socialism for a new generation.

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It has been a deliberate strategy to double down on the radicalism of Labour’s policies at the party’s Brighton conference, according to Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary and an ally of Jeremy Corbyn. “Some people thought we couldn’t build on that fresh and radical offer in 2017 and we would run out of ideas. But this conference shows our thinking going even further,” he said.

However, there is some scepticism among shadow cabinet ministers and senior advisers about whether all of these announcements will make it into the party’s manifesto without their sharpest edges being rubbed off or the costs scaled back.

The private schools policy, passed on the conference floor, would involve removing their charitable status, redistributing their endowments, investments and properties to the state sector, and limit the proportion of private school students admitted to universities. But Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, only included a pledge in her speech that a future Labour government would scrap the “tax loopholes” that benefit private schools in its first budget.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said it would not be one of his priorities. “I’m not quite sure what it means. We’re going to have to look into it … my priority is to improve the quality of education in state schools. As you know Angela Rayner was talking about dealing with tax loopholes that private schools exploit … I suppose it has technically become Labour policy. Do I personally agree? I suspect when I was a student coming to these conferences I might have done, but the priority for me would be to improve education in the state sector.”

Likewise, the small-print of the policy on a four-day working week is that Labour would achieve this as a national average rather than a cap on working hours and aim to make progress by increasing statutory holiday entitlements.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said it was essential to “get rid of bloody universal credit”, and the conference voted overwhelmingly to do so. But a more cautious line was taken by Margaret Greenwood, the shadow work and pensions secretary, who said the current policy was to “stop the rollout” of the benefit rather than scrap it, leaving the possibility it could be overhauled and rebadged.

Ultimately the strength of each policy will be determined by the party’s clause V meeting before a general election involving shadow ministers, members, trade unions and affiliates. “Clause V will knock the bonkers off,” said one of Labour’s most senior politicians, when asked whether all the policies agreed at conference would make it into the manifesto.

But voters may well be paying attention already, knowing that an election is on the horizon. There has been much angst within Labour about Brexit and the party’s warring internal factions, but it is still possible that the big, eye-catching policies will be the things that stick in people’s minds beyond this week in Brighton.