Planning and party manifestos in recent UK general elections

In a democracy, a commonly held idea is that political parties present their programmes for government before elections so that people know what they are voting for. It is then often held that governments should follow what they have said, when in government. These programmes may take several forms, but the most common one is the party manifesto. Here the aim is to consider how planning elements have figured in manifestos. Manifestos are surveyed from the four UK general elections 2010–2019, concentrating on those of the Conservative and Labour parties. How far did planning figure in manifestos? Were there big differences between parties and elections? To what extent did a winning party follow its manifesto? Manifestos tread a complicated line between clear ideological statements and more immediately tuned electoral political considerations. Some implications are drawn out for how planning actors may relate to manifestos in the future. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ .