Brexit, oil and bombs: The words that have defined UK elections since 1945
This year, the standout topic for both parties’ manifestos was the NHS. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
Climate change, Brexit, and Europe might have been key touchstones in previous election campaigns, but Guardian analysis shows they are given less prominence in the two main UK parties’ latest manifestos in 2024.
Looking into the text of every Conservative and Labour election manifesto dating back to 1945 shows that, while both parties still dedicate column inches to the climate emergency, these issues are less prominent than in the last election cycle.
While the Labour party mentions climate issues at a higher rate (1.7 climate related terms for every 1,000 words) than the Tory manifesto does (1 in 1,000), these issues are mentioned with much less frequency than in the 2019 documents (4.4 mentions in 1,000 words for Labour and 1.1 for the Conservatives).
Both the government and Labour have come in for criticism over their manifestos, both of which were published this week, from climate experts who say that neither party is going far enough to mitigate the climate crisis.
The analysis – which captures relative word frequency for every manifesto published by either party over eight decades – doesn’t consider the content of policies or the meaning of words. That means that the strength of policies, or even where each party stands on an issue, is not taken into account. However, measuring the amount of ink dedicated to different areas gives a flavour of the key topics of focus for the two parties.
References to Brexit, Europe, the European Community and the other EU institutions made up less than one in every 1,000 words in both parties’ policy documents: the lowest level since 2010 for Labour or 1970 for the Conservatives.
The Conservative party mentioned the word Brexit 61 times in its 2019 manifesto, which was titled “Get Brexit Done”. That fell to just 12 times in this year’s document.
Labour’s new manifesto – released on Thursday and titled “It’s time for real change” – mentioned the word Brexit just once, compared with 21 times at the last election.
Using a technique called “term frequency-inverse document frequency” (TFIDF), the Guardian also analysed each manifesto to find its “standout” term – not the most common word, but one which appeared the most when compared with every other manifesto.
This gives a rough idea of the issues and events that most defined each election compared with others in history, and the policy areas that would have preoccupied each party leader during their time in the role outside the terms that might appear during every election such as “education” or the “economy”.
This year, for the first time, the Conservatives’ standout word using TFIDF was “NHS”, a word mentioned 54 times in their manifesto.
The party mentioned it in relation to immigration (“we have taken steps to ensure those coming to the UK do not place a burden on the NHS”), national service (“roles could include special constable, NHS responder or RNLI volunteer”), and gender dysphoria (“we have already stopped the routine use by the NHS of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria”), as well as talking about its core plans for the health service itself.
The NHS was – less surprisingly – also the standout topic for Labour using this method, with its 52 mentions mainly focusing on the sorry state of the service after 14 years of Conservative-led government.
The list below shows the standout words in both main parties’ manifestos since the second world war using the TFIDF analysis, each situated within a quote showing the context in which it was used. The results highlight not only how much politics has changed, but also how similar some issues are to today.
1945
Clement Attlee’s Labour beats Winston Churchill’s Conservatives
Labour: “For the Labour party is prepared to achieve it by drastic policies and keeping a firm constructive hand on our whole productive machinery; the Labour party will put the community first and the sectional interests of private business after”
Conservative: “All that we long to achieve in making good the wartime shortage depends on attaining the highest possible levels of peacetime production as fast as we can”
1950
Attlee’s Labour wins against Churchill’s Conservatives again
Labour: “Since the Ministry of Food took over the importing and wholesaling of meat 10 years ago, the job has been done efficiently and economically”
Conservative: “An Imperial Economic Conference should consider the whole problem of strengthening the resources of the empire in order to close the dollar gap”
1951
Churchill’s Conservatives beat Attlee’s Labour
Labour: “World shortage of raw materials has steeply raised the prices of our imports and re-opened the dollar gap”
Conservative: “For all these purposes we support the rearmament programme on which the socialist government have embarked”
1955
Anthony Eden’s Conservatives beat Attlee’s Labour
Labour: “As we in Britain prepare to go to the poll, the hydrogen bomb looms over all mankind”
Conservative: “We believe that people in self-governing colonies will find greater security, prosperity and freedom by remaining part of the Commonwealth”
1959
Harold Macmillan’s Conservatives beat Hugh Gaitskell’s Labour
Labour: “We shall: enable the Wages Board to introduce a ‘payment during sickness’ scheme; end the evils of the tied cottage; and through National Superannuation provide security in old age for workers in an industry in which there are virtually no private occupational schemes”
Conservative: “On British initiative the conference of experts met last year and reached agreement on some aspects of controlling the suspension of nuclear tests”
1964
Harold Wilson’s Labour beats Alec Douglas-Home’s Conservatives
Labour: “Automation, new sources of energy and the growing use of the electronic calculating machine are beginning to transform almost all branches of our economic and social life”
Conservative: “In the towns and cities where most remaining slums are concentrated, clearance rates are being doubled”
1966
Wilson’s Labour wins against Ted Heath’s Conservatives
Labour: “Meanwhile the cruel war in Vietnam continues; Labour has consistently urged negotiations to stop the fighting and a settlement which would enable the peoples of north and south Vietnam to determine their own future, and which would ensure that the whole country became neutral, without foreign troops or bases”
Conservative: “Help immigrants already here to rejoin their families in their countries of origin, or to return with their families to these countries, if they so wish”
1970
Heath’s Conservatives beat Wilson’s Labour
Labour: “We see our role primarily in helping the poorer countries to develop and in the stand we take on basic issues of colour and race, while maintaining as loyal members of the UN a general defence capability based on Europe but ready and trained for international peace-keeping operations elsewhere.”
Conservative: “Our vigorous new housing drive for the 1970s will have three main objectives: To house the homeless, to concentrate on slum clearance and to provide better housing for those many families living without modern amenities”
February 1974
Hung parliament – Wilson’s Labour largest party against Heath’s Conservatives
Labour: “Whatever the circumstances in which we take office, we shall still have to meet the menaces of the mounting price of oil, of a £2,000 million deficit on the balance of payments, and of even more rapidly rising prices”
Conservative: “It is a tragedy that the miners’ leaders should have turned down this offer”
October 1974
Wilson’s Labour win against Heath’s Conservatives
Labour: “Oil, the lifeblood of industry and transport, costs four times what it did a year ago; wheat, feedgrains, sugar and other imported foodstuffs, nearly double”
Conservative: “People often ask – ‘What can we do to help beat the crisis?’ One really useful thing that many of us could do is to cut down voluntarily on the amount of energy that we use, particularly oil”
1979
Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives beat James Callaghan’s Labour
Labour: “This is a positive strategy for industry, based on cooperation between government, trade unions and management”
Conservative: “Pay bargaining in central and local government, and other services such as health and education, must take place within the limits of what the taxpayer and ratepayer can afford”
1983
Thatcher’s Conservatives win against Michael Foot’s Labour
Labour: “We will also open immediate negotiations with our EEC partners, and introduce the necessary legislation, to prepare for Britain’s withdrawal from the EEC, to be completed well within the lifetime of the Labour government”
Conservative: “The world recession of the past four years, and the high level of unemployment throughout the industrial world, have made the going harder”
1987
Thatcher’s Conservatives beat Neil Kinnock’s Labour
Labour: “This election will decide whether we put our resources into the real defence provided by a modern, well equipped army, navy and air force safeguarding our country and supporting Nato; or spend those sums on maintaining an ageing system of nuclear weapons, while buying a new generation of missiles which cannot give our country effective defence”
Conservative: “We gave a lead in Nato and installed cruise missiles. Today, as a result, the Soviet Union is at last prepared to negotiate to remove its own missiles targeted against us.”
1992
John Major’s Conservatives win against Neil Kinnock’s Labour
Labour: “This general election is a choice between a Conservative government paralysed by recession, and a Labour government determined to get on with building recovery”
Conservative: “When or if other members of the EC [European Commission] move to a monetary union with a single currency, we will take our own unfettered decision on whether to join”
1997
Tony Blair’s Labour wins against Major’s Conservatives
Labour: “We will meet the demand for decentralisation of power to Scotland and Wales, once established in referendums”
Conservative: “In 20 years, privatisation has gone from the dream of a few Conservative visionaries to the big idea which is transforming decaying public sector industries in almost every country in the world”
2001
Blair’s Labour wins against William Hague’s Conservatives
Labour: “We will expand the Excellence in Cities programme for urban secondary schools, with extra help for the weakest schools, learning mentors and in-school units to help manage pupil behaviour”
Conservative: “Our countryside, ignored by the government, has been devastated by the Foot and Mouth crisis”
2005
Blair’s Labour wins against Michael Howard’s Conservatives
Labour: “New investment NHS spending has doubled since 1997, and will triple by 2008; already we have an extra 27,000 doctors in post or in training and 79,000 extra nurses; over 100 new hospital building projects under way; 500,000 more operations a year”
Conservative: “We believe that the time has now come to establish a British Border Control Police, whose sole job will be to secure Britain’s borders”
2010
Hung parliament – David Cameron’s Conservatives largest party against Gordon Brown’s Labour
Labour: “Under Labour, the NHS will remain a universal health service, not a second-rate safety net”
Conservative: “We will reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions and increase our share of global markets for low carbon technologies”
2015
Cameron’s Conservatives beat Ed Miliband’s Labour
Labour: “We will embark on the biggest devolution of power to our English city and county regions in a hundred years with an English Devolution Act”
Conservative: “We believe in letting the people decide: so we will hold an in/out referendum on our membership of the EU before the end of 2017”
2017
Hung parliament – Theresa May’s Conservatives largest party against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour
Labour: “We will scrap the Conservative’s Brexit white paper and replace it with fresh negotiating priorities that have a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union”
Conservative: “Theresa May’s Conservatives will deliver the world’s most dynamic digital economy, giving digital businesses access to the investment, skills and talent they need to succeed”
2019
Boris Johnson’s Conservatives beat Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour
Labour: “We will kickstart a Green Industrial Revolution to tackle the climate emergency by shifting to renewable energy, investing in rail and electric cars, and making housing energy-efficient, to reduce fuel poverty and excess winter deaths”
Conservative: “And as things stand, there is only one way to get Brexit done – and that is to return a Conservative government with a working majority on December 12th”
2024
Keir Starmer’s Labour against Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives
Labour: “As a first step, in England we will deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans and appointments every year; that is 40,000 more appointments every week”
Conservative: “Throughout the pandemic, the Conservative government acted to save lives, protect the NHS and deliver a world leading vaccine programme”