The People's Manifesto

The People's Manifesto is a comedic and satirical political manifesto, based on an idea by the British satirist and political activist Mark Thomas, and created by his audiences. The manifesto is made up of policies suggested and voted for by members of the public who attended Thomas's stand-up performances. Thomas himself would then go and campaign on the winning policies. As well as forming part of his stand-up shows, the idea transferred to radio, being broadcast as Mark Thomas: The Manifesto on BBC Radio 4. A book of the best policies was published on 28 January 2010, entitled Mark Thomas Presents The People's Manifesto. Thomas then announced a contest to find someone to stand in the 2010 UK General Election based on the manifesto policies. The winner of the competition, Danny Kushlick, stood in Bristol West and finished sixth out of seven candidates, winning 343 votes, which was 0.6% of the vote.

The People's Manifesto formed a part of Thomas stand-up tour entitled It's The Stupid Economy. Before the show and during the interval people wrote down their ideas for policies, with help from the campaign group NO2ID. Thomas would then go through the policies, deciding which ones would be considered for the manifesto and which ones should be immediately rejected. At the end of the show, the public were asked to vote for the best policy by shouting out loudly in support of the policies, the winning one being formed as part of the manifesto.

Thomas said in an interview with The List: "People innately have lots of solutions. It sounds like an obvious thing, but everyone thinks that they can be Prime Minister; everyone thinks that they can do a better job. They certainly think they can do a better job than their MP. Everyone has opinions, and that was how the manifesto show was born. Instead of politicians telling us what we should do, it should be the other way round."

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