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Ravinder Athwal

Ravinder Athwal

AS Britain enters what is all likelihood set to be a general election year, the Labour Party’s Ravinder Athwal, or Rav as he is popularly known as, has a crucial job at hand. His party has entrusted him with the task of writing the manifesto. Athwal (33) has been the Labour Party’s Head of Economic Policy since September 2022. He took over this role after Claire Ainsley stepped down. Prior to that this assignment, the Cambridge University graduate was the head of growth strategy at the Treasury.

After Sir Keir Starmer took over the reins of the Labour Party, he wanted to steer his party to a more centrist path and jettison its left leaning legacy from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer recruited a group of ex-civil serv ants, including Athwal, to provide a makeover for the party. Labour is looking for a pragmatic and stripped-down manifesto to ‘bombproof’ the Party from attacks by the Tories. As a result, the party is planning only limited first-term reforms on social care and a green investment plan, with strong underpinnings towards fiscal discipline. Early into this year, the Labour party cut its green investment plans by half from £28bn a year to under £15bn, to shield itself against Conservative party attacks on the scale of borrowing required. The move has angered many green activists. A key task for Athwal and shadow Treasury chief secretary Darren Jones is to make sure the manifesto sums add up, especially given the party is committed to raising only relatively small amounts of money in extra taxes. Athwal is being provided inputs by each shadow department and he is crunching policy submissions to give final shape to the Labour party’s manifesto. Many of Labour’s policies have already been agreed, including reforming the planning system, setting up a nationally owned energy company and introducing breakfast clubs in primary schools. Athwal graduated from Cambridge Universi ty in 2012 with an MPhil in Economics, having completed his BA in 2011.


He has been an academic and spent 20 months as head of growth strategy at the Treasury. The Labour party has been out of power for 13 years, and the crushing blow it received during the last national election in 2019, was its worst since 1935. This time around the polls have remained steadily favourable with the party enjoying anything between about eight per cent or more than a 15 per cent lead in most polls. However, the party leadership does not want complacency to set in. When the Tories were beaten in the recent by-elections in Kingswood and Wellingborough, Starmer’s reaction was measured and he observed that the Labour party has “more work to do”. As the deadline for the completion of mani festonears, Athwal has the challenging task of making it a lively document that conveys the party’s narrative and strikes a chord with the voters, rather than being a mere laundry list of policy announcements.

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