Scrutiny, not endorsement
Scrutiny
Good ideas should survive difficult questions.
Manifesto 1.0 actively welcomes criticism — from members of the public, economists, academics, journalists, politicians and policy specialists. The purpose of publishing these proposals one at a time is to give each one time to be tested rather than campaigned on.
Where a challenge is stronger than the proposal, the proposal should change. Later versions of the manifesto will record where that has happened.
Four kinds of useful criticism
Economic scrutiny
Do the numbers hold? Costings, fiscal assumptions, growth effects, distributional impact and the quality of the evidence behind each proposal.
Practical implementation
Could this actually be delivered? Legislation, institutional capacity, timescales, administrative burden and the record of similar attempts.
Unintended consequences
Who might be harmed, which incentives are distorted, and what could go wrong that the proposal has not accounted for.
Alternative ideas
If a different mechanism would achieve the same objective more cheaply, more fairly or more simply, it should replace the current proposal.
Approved Challenges
Challenges approved for publication
These are challenge submissions that have been reviewed and approved. Only the proposal reference, the challenge text and an optional submitter name are shown.
No challenges have been approved for publication yet. Approved challenges will appear here once they have been reviewed.
Have Your Say
Challenge Manifesto 1.0
Set out the flaw, the risk, the missing evidence or the better alternative. Name and email are optional — the argument matters more than who is making it.