Manifesto Fatigue

I've taken a few days leave this week and thought I'd shun the normal holiday reads and take the chance to have a more detailed look at the various manifestos from the main parties. A bit sad, I know.

After wading through over 300 pages of promises, pledges, graphs, photos of smiling happy people and politicians on building sites I think I need another holiday!

Over the next few weeks we'll be publishing our overview of how these relate to what the contents of our Campaign for Business 2015 are. On first read through there are a huge number of similarities to what the politicians are promising to what you  told us should be in the Campaign document. There are differences obviously between the parties and still a lot of built in wriggle-room for after the election. For example I'm still none the wiser whether Labour intend to scrap all zero-hours contracts or as their manifesto words it ban "exploitative zero hours contracts". How do you define exploitative or is the assumption they all are? The Conservatives promise a business rates  review. I'm always wary about reviews - from early work we have done on this it may just be too complex a subject and maybe Labour have a more direct answer in just cutting them? 

Manifestos serve a purpose - they set out stances, positions and policies on which an election is fought. However reading these this last week, at the back of my mind all the time was the question of how much would survive any post-election negotiations should they be needed to form another coalition government? 

It certainly promises to be an interesting month ahead.