In advance of the start of the short campaign on 30 March, all parties are working on completing their election manifestos. The Conservatives’, overseen by Jo Johnson MP (Boris’s younger brother), is said to be nearly finished, while David Laws is refining the Lib Dems’. Ukip, meanwhile, recently replaced its manifesto chief Tim Aker with Suzanne Evans after he failed to meet an agreed deadline.
What of Labour? Unlike in 2010, when its manifesto was written by Ed Miliband, the party has not publicly announced an official author. But I can reveal the key figures involved in the document. The text is being written by academic Jonathan Rutherford, an adviser to Jon Cruddas, and Marc Stears, Miliband’s chief speechwriter and a friend from his Oxford days. The three politicians at the heart of the process are Jon Cruddas, the head of the party’s policy review, Angela Eagle, who is leading internal consultation, and Jon Trickett, who is leading external consultation. Torsten Bell, Labour’s director of policy and rebuttal, is handling the technical policy detail.
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