So many manifestos — who has the answers?
Create the party
you would vote for.
Borrow the best policies, fix the ones you don't like, and craft a manifesto that finally makes sense.
Energy and bills
Renewables, nuclear, oil and gas, household bills. Power Britain your way.
Stricter accountability for officials handling public money.
You see this sort of thing, don't you? Someone's always poking around accounts when they think no one's looking. It's a drain. We need a clear system. If you're managing taxpayer cash, or even public funds from other places, and it looks d
An 'Educational Needs Plan' for Every Child
Every child is special. Labelling some as SEN clearly isn't working. Support teacher availability and class sizes are often allocated by the number of SEN children in each, rather than by their actual needs. Children who don't have a
Pay teaching assistants a proper living wage, or stop pretending schools function without them
A teaching assistant in my school earns £18,400 a year on the standard contract. That is term-time only, obviously, but even pro-rata that works out below the real living wage. We have TAs running small-group interventions, one-to-one suppo
Abolish SATs. They measure nothing that matters and damage the children taking them.
I have watched ten year olds cry in the toilets before a SATs paper. I have watched bright, curious kids start to hate school in year six because for months everything they do is either "practice" or "performance". I have watched schools r
Bring back proper imperial measurements in schools. The metric system was imposed on us by Brussels.
Pounds, ounces, yards, furlongs, gills, firkins and stones. Britain built an empire on these measurements. We went to the moon on these measurements. Actually the Americans did that, but they used inches, which we invented. Just saying. Th
Pay teachers properly or stop asking where they all went
Four of my colleagues left the profession in the last two years. Two went into corporate training, one retrained as a data analyst, one just stopped. None of them wanted to leave teaching. They loved it. They left because they couldnt affo
Fund libraries properly and open them 7 days a week
Nearly 800 libraries have closed in England since 2010. The ones left are open three days a week with volunteers doing work that trained librarians used to do. We tell kids to read more and close the places where they get free books. For p
Every school should have a proper counsellor, not just a poster on a wall
A poster saying its OK not to be OK is not mental health provision. It is a poster. Every school should have a trained counsellor available at least 3 days a week. Not a teaching assistant who did a two day course. A qualified counsellor w
Stop burying teachers in admin that has nothing to do with teaching
Last week I spent more time filling in tracking spreadsheets than planning lessons. Audit every piece of admin teachers do. If it doesnt directly help a child learn, scrap it.
Cap class sizes at 25 with no exceptions
Cap class sizes at 25. Everywhere. Primary and secondary. Yes it costs money. Its called investing in children.
Free school meals for all primary school children, no exceptions
A child who has eaten a proper meal at lunchtime learns better in the afternoon. This isnt complicated and it isnt controversial and yet somehow we are still means-testing school dinners so that some families who need them dont apply becaus
Fund SEN provision properly instead of making parents fight for every hour
Why does it take 18 months to get an EHCP assessment? Eighteen months. For a child. I have been a primary school teacher for 14 years. The system isnt a bit broken. It is completely broken. Parents fight through paperwork and tribunal thre
How it works
Build your party
Name it. Give it a colour. Write a tagline. Every great movement starts somewhere, even a fictional one.
Write your policies
Make your case. Explain how it works. Let the community vote, debate, and challenge your ideas.
Vote, debate, fork
Vote on other people's ideas. Disagree kindly. Fork a policy you like and adapt it to your own manifesto.