The Observer view: manifestos reveal the gulf between the

The Conservatives have no new vision for the next five years and the Liberal Democrats project a qualified optimism, but Labour could eventually prove transformative

The Britain that the next government will inherit on 5 July has been profoundly misgoverned for 14 years. Productivity, the heart of prosperity, has stagnated, as has business investment; the already weak trends were ruptured in 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum, and have stubbornly refused to budge since. Low growth and frozen living standards are thus guaranteed until those trends are reversed. Even though taxation has climbed, there cannot be one citizen unaware of the intolerable stress on underfunded public services set to intensify in the years ahead on current spending plans.

Meanwhile, life expectancy in disadvantaged parts of England is falling for the first time in more than a century; infant mortality is rising; poverty so blights 4.3 million children that we have among the shortest five-year-olds in Europe; one in six adults are illiterate or innumerate. People commonly live with their parents until their mid 30s because housing, whether rented or mortgaged, is prohibitively expensive. Having children is deferred; the birthrate is falling.