Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?
Position1 of 8›: The manifesto
Argument‹3 of 3: Tried to be everything to everyone

The manifesto tried to do too much, and in doing so, did nothing.

The argument

Voters are not fools. They know that when a government enters office, it has a finite amount of political capital. It must use this capital to fulfil the most important policies of its election manifesto. This is why most parties put one or two signature policies in the manifesto. Labour's decision to include many big-ticket policies, including its free broadband policy, increased NHS funding, more spending on the elderly population, and the eradication of university tuition fees, only revealed the hollowness of the policies. Voters could see that the government would not have the political capital to bring all of these policies to fruition. By promising the world, voters knew they would deliver nothing. A large manifesto that attempted to do too much alienated many potential Labour voters in the 2019 General Election.

Context

The manifesto tried to do too much. It featured policies to appeal to the elderly, free broadband, the eradication of university tuition fees for students, and a promise to reduce the voting age to 16. In trying to make everybody happy, the manifesto made nobody happy.

Premises

[P1]A government has finite political capital and must spend it on a few signature policies, which is why most parties limit the big promises in their manifesto. [P2] Labour's 2019 manifesto instead packed in many big-ticket pledges—free broadband, more NHS and elderly funding, abolishing tuition fees—which voters saw as undeliverable and therefore hollow. [C] Therefore, because Labour's manifesto tried to be everything to everyone, the manifesto is why Labour lost the 2019 general election.

Counter-arguments

Labour’s manifesto needed to do something for everybody. Under the Conservatives, everybody has seen their economic floor lowered and their safety nets dismantled. The Labour manifesto didn’t attempt to people please, it merely identified social and economic injustices and called them by name. The manifesto set out to empower renters, increase support for pensioners, improve the lives of disabled people, tackle in-work poverty, restore dignity to the NHS and reduce income inequality. These policies set out to roll back the Conservatives’ austerity program and provide a remedy to many of the injustices that plague modern Britain. Many in the country saw the manifesto for what it was, a prescription for Britain’s many ills, not a people-pleasing, everything-to-everyone wish list.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The voters did not "see through" the manifesto. Many of the policies were highly popular.