Labour Party Manifesto Snap Analysis

The Labour Party today became the first major party to show their hand and release their 2017 Manifesto in advance of the UK general election.

While much of Labour’s initiatives were leaked in draft form last week, today’s publication – accompanied with a launch event broadcast on Facebook Live – contained some surprises, including the proposed de-privatisation of the UK water industry.

We’ve taken a first look at the content of the 125 page document, including the handy word cloud illustration above

This visualisation immediately looks like a Labour document, even before we have other parties to compare it against. The prevalence of words like public, services, rights, support and workers point to some traditional Labour priorities. Also of interest is the lack of focus on Brexit – the term appears just 27 times in almost 24,000 words (if you look closely in the word cloud, you might find it!). While the Labour Party might want to move the national conversation away from Brexit, it is interesting how little focus their manifesto puts on what is realistically the biggest issue of the day for many voters.

We also plugged the manifesto text into IBM Watson’s Personality Insights tool. This is designed to identify personality traits from speech or written word. The Labour manifesto is summarised as follows:

You are particular.

You are self-controlled: you have control over your desires, which are not particularly intense. You are assertive: you tend to speak up and take charge of situations, and you are comfortable leading groups. And you are energetic: you enjoy a fast-paced, busy schedule with many activities.
Your choices are driven by a desire for organization.

You are relatively unconcerned with both achieving success and tradition. You make decisions with little regard for how they show off your talents. And you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

(IBM Watson)

While this assertive, particular personality is perhaps somewhat inevitable in a structured and detailed proposal for government, there are some telling traits here.

IBM Watson gives the manifesto a score of 34% for ‘Helping others’. If this seems low, it compares well to Theresa May’s speech outside Downing Street which launched the election campaign and scored 23% on this measure (perhaps because of the prevalence of ‘I’ and ‘we’ within her speech).

The final sentence of the analysis seems to capture the general perception of Jeremy Corbyn well, and the qualities of organisation and leadership will tick some of the party’s objectives in presenting themselves in a positive light.

More concerning is the sense of a lack of intensity and ambivalence that come across in the personality analysis.

Look out for further analysis from MEC as the other main parties make their case in the coming days and the public and media react.