Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party want to help working people by improving their standard of living. Since the financial crisis in 2008/2009, the average person's standard of living has only increased by 5% after adjusting for inflation.

The Labour Party's main idea is to encourage more investment, which has been lacking since 2016. They hope this will lead to more training, skills, technology, and funding for infrastructure. Economists think this would make us more efficient. The UK's productivity, which measures how much each person produces per hour, is lower than that of many other countries.

However, just having good intentions is not enough for businesses. Apart from changes to planning and education, few policies encourage business spending. While there is £3.5 billion of public "green" investments, including upgrading homes and investing in hydrogen,

The economy is expected to grow in the next few years, but unexpected events could change these plans. The big question is how much these plans would help and how quickly. Typically, investments take years to affect our finances.

The Labour Party's tax and spending plan is straightforward. They aim to raise £8 billion by changing tax rules for wealthy individuals, cracking down on tax avoidance (particularly "non-dom"), applying VAT to private schools, and implementing a windfall tax on big energy companies. However, there is some uncertainty about how parents or energy firms will react, which could affect how much money the plan brings in.

The money raised will be spent on environmental projects, more NHS operations, mental health services, skilled teachers, and smaller initiatives like providing breakfast clubs at primary schools, totalling just under £5 billion. An additional £4 billion will go towards Labour's green prosperity plan, including GB Energy, a national wealth fund, and insulation plans, partly funded by borrowing.

The Labour Party says it has been careful, leaving £2.5 billion of the money it expects to raise unspent. They claim their plan is responsible and doesn't aim to compete with the Conservative Party's tax cuts. The overall tax burden may return to a level not seen since the post-war era. The thinking is that the public won't find tax cuts believable and will prefer stability.

Labour proposes adding a 20% VAT to private school fees. The revenue will be used to hire 6,500 more teachers for state schools in England. Some worry that this could discourage families from pursuing private education, which might be considered an extra tax on ambition.

Around 7% of children in the UK attend fee-paying private schools. It's expected that only a tiny fraction of these students might switch to the state education system due to the VAT. The most expensive private schools charge up to £50,000 annually for boarding students, while the national average is around £15,000.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts this tax would generate around £1.6 billion yearly. However, it's unclear how exactly this money would be allocated. There's a genuine shortage of teachers, especially in subjects like mathematics and physics. This funding could help address this issue.

Yet, simply increasing funding might not be enough to attract more people to the teaching profession. Unlike many graduate roles that offer flexible working arrangements, teaching requires daily in-person attendance and often involves heavy workloads. Many teachers leave the profession as a result. Additionally, experienced teachers' real-term pay has decreased by 12% since 2010. The incoming government will soon have to decide on the pay offer for teachers in England for the upcoming year.

Labour has promised to build 1.5 million new homes in England over the next five years, which hasn't been done since the 1960s. This is a big challenge because, in the last 12 months, less than 150,000 homes were started, much lower than the 300,000 needed to keep the promise. The last time this many homes were finished was in 1969, primarily through new council housing, which comprised 45% of the total.

For the past decade, about 152,000 homes were finished each year. Private-sector house-builders only exceeded 170,000 completions twice in the early 1970s, averaging 123,000 in the last ten years.

Labour thinks planning rules and land costs have made it hard for builders. The party's plans to change home construction's economics and red tape could help private builders. However, the party must count on housing groups and local councils to reach the goal. Last year, housing groups started 30,000 homes, while English councils started just 3,000.

The Labour Party plans to bring back its proposal to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars starting in 2030. This decision aims to provide car manufacturers with certainty and reverses the government's previous extension of the deadline to 2035, which had received mixed reactions from car companies.

The main challenge is whether there will be enough demand for electric vehicles to make this plan possible. Although more electric car models are entering the market, demand remained flat last year. To address this, Labour plans to make information on battery conditions standard to help people buying second-hand cars and speed up the installation of charging points. However, they have not specified a target for this.

The SMMT trade body argues that consumers need more incentives than mandates to encourage the transition to electric vehicles. They believe that addressing barriers such as high prices and the uneven distribution of charging infrastructure is crucial.

Labour plans to end the Rwanda scheme that "discourages people from using small boats to reach the UK". The party wants to use £75 million from the Rwanda scheme to create a new Border and Security Command. This reallocation of funds seems possible because the current amount given to Rwanda (£541 million over five years) is more than Labour estimates it will cost to set up the new Command. The funding for the new Command will come from the existing budget for immigration enforcement in the Home Office.

It's not clear how effective this change will be. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says the new Command will give investigators powers similar to those used in counter-terrorism to "monitor and restrict the activities of trafficking suspects".

While this plan sounds promising, there are challenges to consider. It might take several years to see actual results, and Labour might face opposition from Brussels and Paris while trying to negotiate new agreements to fight people trafficking.

In addition to the existing departmental budgets, Labour's most significant spending commitment is the £23.7 billion for green measures during the next parliament. This amount surpasses the additional spending on health or education. Green policies are central to the party’s growth, prosperity, and climate plans.

The planned £1.7 billion per year for the much-publicised Great British Energy Company is intended to accelerate the deployment of renewable and nuclear power significantly. The goal is to create 650,000 jobs by 2030, drive industrial renewal, lower bills, and establish secure clean energy supplies.

An additional £1.1 billion per year will improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s ageing homes. Once again, the objective is to create jobs, lower bills, and reduce emissions.

However, there may be challenges. Governments have long struggled to encourage people to upgrade their homes, even with generous cash offers. Local opposition to solar farms and new onshore wind turbines, both essential components of the green energy strategy, is also likely.

Kier Starmer wants the Labour Party to appear very different from the party led by his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, in the 2019 election. However, there have been no significant changes in Labour's policy on nuclear weapons. Even under Corbyn, the party supported Trident, although he was once quoted in 2015 stating that he would never use it.

Kier Starmer aims to depart from the past in the manifesto. Labour’s unwavering commitment to the nuclear deterrent and its allegiance to NATO are emphasised without any ambiguity.

However, the details are limited because Labour indicates that if elected, it would need to conduct a comprehensive review to assess the UK's threats and the state of its armed forces. This review would also influence any decisions regarding defence spending, allowing Labour to allocate 2.5% of GDP to defence spending.

The Labour Party plans to increase the number of weekly operations, scans, and appointments in England by 40,000, or two million a year. They will introduce more weekend services and involve the private sector in achieving this. The funding for these improvements will come from cracking down on "non-dom" tax arrangements and other tax evasions.

Experts believe this plan, representing a less than 2% increase, could help reduce waiting times. However, it remains uncertain whether this target is realistic.

Despite receiving more funding and hiring additional staff, the NHS serves about the same number of planned care patients as before the last election. This is due to increased demand for emergency services and ongoing challenges with delayed discharges, where patients cannot leave the hospital due to a lack of community support.

Labour's manifesto states that the NHS budget will increase above inflation, but this lacks specificity. Historically, the NHS received around 4% extra funding per year above inflation, which was only enough to maintain the existing level of service.

Some experts argue that even more funding is needed for the proposed improvements, or there will have to be trade-offs in other areas of healthcare. The Nuffield Trust think tank expressed concern about this lack of detail in the proposal. It is important to note that these policies only apply to England, as other nations have health policies.

The plan outlines the main ideas for changing the troubled care system in England. It suggests creating a National Care Service with "national standards for care quality". The focus will be on giving care at home to help people live independently.

The plan also suggests a fair pay agreement between staff, unions, care providers, and the government to improve pay, working conditions, and training for care workers. There is a commitment to work together for long-term changes, but it doesn't say how it will be funded.

The plan also promises to ensure that people living in care homes have the right to see their families. This promise will likely be well-received by relatives who hadn't been able to visit their loved ones during the pandemic. Some people have asked for a legal right to see family no matter what.

The plan doesn't talk about the widely discussed idea of limiting how much older or disabled people should pay for personal care in their lifetime in England. However, a Labour source has confirmed they won't change the plan to put an £86,000 limit on care costs from October 2025.

There are a lot of pending rape cases in the courts in England and Wales. As of April 2024, more than 68,000 trials were waiting to be heard. Victims of severe sexual violence must endure long waits for their cases to be resolved.

The Labour Party plans to allocate specific court space for rape cases to reduce these pending cases. This plan doesn't involve new spending but instead involves reorganising existing resources. The main issue is the shortage of experienced barristers to handle these cases, which impacts the availability of judges for these trials. A survey of criminal barristers suggests that more of them might stop working on sexual offence cases in the next year due to issues like pay, hours, and stress.

The solution? The criminal justice system is widely aware that significant funding increases are needed, but there are no indications of that happening.

A plan is in the works to address ticket scalping, which has made cultural events, especially in London, too expensive and complicated to access, particularly for working-class families.

Some fans miss important events, while others pay inflated prices or fall victim to fake ticket scams. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour highlighted this problem.

Ticket scalping for profit is already not allowed in many countries. The Labour Party suggests changes to consumer rights laws to limit ticket resales, set a cap on resale prices, and specify the number of tickets individual resellers can sell. Additionally, the aim is to make platforms like Facebook more responsible.