"The longest suicide note in history" is anepithet originally used by the BritishLabour Party member of ParliamentGerald Kaufman[1] to describe his party's1983 general election manifesto, which emphasisedsocialist policies in a more profound manner than previous such documents—and which Kaufman felt would ensure that the Labour Party (then in opposition) would lose the election, which it ultimately did.
The New Hope for Britain was a 39-page booklet which called forunilateralnuclear disarmament; higherpersonal taxation for the rich; withdrawal from theEuropean Economic Community;abolition of theHouse of Lords; and the re-nationalisation of recentlyprivatised industries such asBritish Aerospace and theBritish Shipbuilders Corporation.[2] The manifesto was based on an earlier and much longer policy paper with a similar title,Labour's Plan: The New Hope for Britain.[3]
The epithet referred not only to the orientation of the policies, but also to their marketing.Labour leaderMichael Foot decided as a statement on internal democracy that the manifesto would consist of all resolutions arrived at in itsparty conference.
The document's moreleft-wing policy proposals, along with the popularity gained by theConservative prime minister,Margaret Thatcher, over the successful outcome of theFalklands War and the division of the opposition vote between the left-wing Labour Party and the centristSocial Democratic Party – Liberal Alliance, dominated by breakaway Labour MPs on the right wing of the party, contributed to a victory with a substantial majority in Parliament for theright-wing Conservative Party Government.[4] The defeat, Labour's worst result since the1918 general election, led to a turning point in the history of the party: Foot retired as leader and it subsequently moved towards the centre under the leaderships ofNeil Kinnock andJohn Smith. Then, under the leadership ofTony Blair in the 1990s, it rebranded itself as "New Labour" andThird Way. Blair led Labour back to government in alandslide victory at the1997 general election, fourteen years and two general election defeats later.
It has subsequently been used byPeter Gutmann in his paper "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" to describe thedigital rights management schemes in theWindows Vista operating system.[5]
The DutchPeople’s Party for Freedom and Democracy politicianMark Rutte used the phrase in reference to the election programme of theDutch Labour Party, during theMay 2010 parliamentary election campaign, deliberately echoing Kaufman.[6]
In the United StatesThe Washington Post columnistCharles Krauthammer compared theRepublican Party's 2012 budget in theHouse of Representatives to the manifesto (in terms of comparable unpopularity) and then remarked of the American House Budget, "At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history."[7] Theneoconservative writerDavid Frum comparedThe Path to Prosperity, proposed by the American congressmanPaul Ryan, in a similar light, saying: "This is how a great political party was impelled to base a presidential campaign on the Ryan plan—a plan that has now replaced the 1983 manifesto of the British Labour Party as "the longest suicide note in history."[8]
Labour's decision in 2015 to engraveelection promises for theupcoming election on a large stone monument nicknamed the "EdStone" (after its leader at the time,Ed Miliband) was within hours dubbed the "heaviest suicide note in history".[9] During the2017 election campaign,George Eaton wrote that Labour's 128-page manifesto for the election would be dismissed as "the new 'longest suicide note in history'".[10]
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