Just Words
A Discourse Analysis of Labour’s 2024 Manifesto and the Implications for British Social Policy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19224872 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kevin Farnsworth (0000-0001-8018-0096, University of York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 379-396 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Policy and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1474-7464 • E-ISSN: 1475-3073 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1474746426101481 |
| OpenAlex | W7162128915 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
Political manifestos are often framed as contracts between parties and voters. They also function as strategic texts that communicate party identity, define problems, set priorities, and articulate visions of a better future. This article examines the UK Labour Party’s 2024 election manifesto in this light, investigating what it reveals about its ideological direction and its social policy agenda. It places the 2024 manifesto in historical context, utilising content analysis and computer-aided large language model techniques and triangulating Manifesto Project coding with automated classification and manual adjudication to assess continuity and change in Labour’s policy positioning. It finds that, across multiple measures, including left–right indices, party coding proximities, and principal component analysis, Labour’s 2024 manifesto clusters closely with New Labour programmes and, on some measures, aligns more closely with Conservative platforms than with Labour policy traditions. These findings suggest that 2024 marks an ideological recalibration for the Labour Party that brings with it significant implications for the direction of the welfare state
Critical discourse analysis · Discourse analysis · Ideology · Manifesto · Politics · Social policy · Vision · Computational and Text Analysis Methods · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Populism, Right-Wing Movements
The Violence of Austerity
Mapping Policy Preferences
Reframing Public Policy
Dismantling the Welfare State?
Retrenched, Reconfigured and Broken
Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election
New Labour and the third way in the British welfare state
The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare Conditionality
Electoral competition and the welfare state
Taking back control of the welfare state
"The Science of "Muddling Through
The Idea of Power and the Role of Ideas
The how’s and why’s of party manifestos
A Question of Trust
Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study
Valence as Macro-Competence
Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State
Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance
Discursive Institutionalism
Creating the Welfare State in Britain, 1945-1960
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |