The top four concerns for voters in the 2015 elections, according to YouGov the leading British pollsters, are the economy, health (especially the future of the National Health Service), immigration and asylum, and welfare benefits. The ranking has not changed too much in poll surveys over the last few months. Between March and April of this year, for example, the economy was the top issue for 52 and 55 per cent of voters respectively; the NHS, 45 and 50 per cent; concerns over immigration 48 and 47 per cent; and welfare benefits 31 and 26 per cent.
The economy – and closing the deficit -- has been a major election promise of both the Conservative and Labour parties. Doing so will require a substantial slash in public spending, and the question hanging fire is where the axe will fall. Labour has promised to meet the deficit from higher taxes, the mansion tax, and reigning in the bankers bonuses; the Conservative party has stated that they will make cuts of £12 billion in the welfare bill. For the smaller parties, like the Scottish National Party, the Greens and the Welsh Plaid Cymru, far more important than reducing the deficit is mobilising resources for greater public spending that will energise the economy through the creation of more jobs.
The NHS is Britain’s most dearly held public asset, and it is the Labour Party that has taken the lead on making it a central issue. The decline in services for the cash-strapped NHS snowballed during the last government. The Conservatives have promised an injection of £ 8 billion into the NHS, an offer that Labour has ridiculed as being feckless and unsustainable. Labour has promised a more modest infusion of £ 2.5 billion, but more importantly has promised the creation of 20,000 more nursing jobs, 3,000 midwives and 8,000 GPs during their government. The anti-austerity parties have promised to halt the privatization of the NHS, some of which took place under Gordon Brown’s Labour government.
On the thorny issue of immigration, both the Conservative and Labour party sound similar, and as Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett has said, are trying to out-Ukip Ukip. (Ukip is the United Kingdom Independence Party, which has grown in Britain on an anti-immigration platform). Ed Miliband of the Labour Party is at pains to state that Labour has taken a new position on immigration.
The Conservatives will continue to cut immigration figures, stop benefits to migrants who come to work, and work with the European Union to be able to deport foreigners accused of crime or terrorism. Labour has promised greater border controls, caps on immigration, and denial of all out-of-work benefits to foreigners for the first two years. The UKIP proposes to cap skilled foreign workers at 50,000 a year, and not provide benefits for a period of five years to outsiders.
Welfare remains a high-priority issue for a significant section of people, especially after the years of Tory-led austerity poverty has eroded wages and living standards of people. Today a million people in the UK depend on food banks for their survival. Labour has promised to overturn some of these measures, like the notorious ‘bedroom tax’. They offer job-guarantees for under-25’s. The Conservatives have vowed to continue welfare cuts to the tune of £ 12 billion. They will further cut the household benefit cap from £ 26,000 to £23,000.
The other issue that will influence voters is the United Kingdom’s place in the EU. Here UKIP wants out of the EU, the Conservatives have promised an in-out referendum on the EU in 2017, and Labour a promise to reform England’s relationship with the EU. Housing, education, saving the environment, defence and diplomatic relations, and law and order are other issues of varying importance to the electorate that all parties have specifically addressed in their manifestos.
