Before any general election, anyone involved in advocacy (as I am on aid and development) indulges in ‘what would my dream manifesto look like?’ fantasies. (And then usually goes off to lobby the political parties and be told why their ideas are silly).

2010 is no exception, with the impending (probably 6 May) general election followed by decisive moments this year on climate change (in Mexico in December), on the millennium development goals (UN summit in September), and the 2010 deadline for meeting the G8’s 2005 pledges on aid, debt and universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDs.

But these are straitened times, so in an uncharacteristic burst of fiscal prudence, I’ve confined my shopping list to things that don’t require big dollops of government cash, and may even (e.g. the financial transactions tax) help fill the fiscal abyss:

• Support a global commitment of $150 billion a year in public finance for climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries from 2013, not paid for by raiding existing aid budgets. Some of this could come from a new financial transactions tax (FTT).

• The said FTT to apply to all transactions at the rate of 0.05 per cent across the Eurozone. At least 50 per cent of the revenues raised will go towards development and climate change (that’s the tricky bit – keeping the Chancellor’s sticky hands from grabbing all of it to fill the UK fiscal hole).

• Reform the regulation of UK tax havens and tax avoidance by UK companies, to require information disclosure and reporting by multi-national companies on the taxes they pay in each country. This should generate extra tax revenues for the UK, as well as poor countries.

• Outlaw the actions of ‘vulture funds’ seeking to sue developing countries.

• Improve the predictability and quality of UK aid by, among other things, increasing the percentage of aid we provide to developing countries’ own budgets, reforming harmful donor conditionality; and enabling people in developing countries to hold both the UK and their own governments to account on aid promises, backed up by a newly created aid ombudsman.

• Honour the UK’s existing promise to untie aid from the use of British goods and services.

• Be consistent in condemning war crimes, serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, and calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.

• Press for the successful conclusion of negotiations for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in 2012.

• Work to improve the speed and effectiveness of life-saving humanitarian aid ensuring that it is given impartially and in line with people’s real needs.

• Ensure an effective regulatory framework that encourages responsible corporate behaviour by all British companies and investors, including when they operate overseas.

• Actively promote development as a core issue for G8 and G20 cooperation and ensure that this is covered as a separate agenda item at each meeting of these groups, with at a minimum full representation for the African Union.

• Support the reform of the International Financial Institutions, including ensuring greater representation for poor countries, enhancing their accountability and transparency and ending the practice of attaching economic policy conditionality to lending.

Of course, aid remains vital and necessary, and we will be pushing for whichever party(ies) emerges triumphant to meet and exceed past promises, but isn’t it impressive what a decent government can do, even without big injections of dosh?

Duncan Green is head of research at Oxfam, read his ‘From Poverty to Power’ blog on www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p

1. Disability Hate Crime reports must be taken seriously and acted on appropriately by the police and (if not already) should receive exactly the same punishment as hate crimes against all other minorities.

2. Parents of disabled children should be given full rights to decide what sort of an education they want their child to have, and at which school. Full provision should be made for mainstream schools to be able to meet the needs of children with all disabilities.

3. Disabled adults should be given an allowance specifically to pay for any therapy their condition requires, to be provided at organisations of their choice.

Five key changes are required to transform Britain’s tarnished relationship with the world and make our foreign policy genuinely progressive. They are as follows:

1. Unilateral nuclear disarmament

In the wake of the financial crisis there’s been an increased willingness to dismantle some of the tired old assumptions inherited from the 1980s. Few clichés from the Thatcher era are more richly deserving of consignment to the dustbin of history than the idea that retaining our ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ is the litmus test of hard-headed realism. After all:

• The government cannot so much as name the enemy that the deterrent is supposed to deter;

• Britain ’s ‘independent’ nuclear capability in fact renders us heavily reliant on US management and technology;

• Far from making us safer, the insistence on retaining Trident only increases the chances that other states will seek their own capabilities, which obviously jeopardises international security. The threat of any sort of international nuclear exchange, whether intended or accidental, is no joke; and

• The idea that we should maintain this sort of massive and indiscriminate destructive power because it affords us greater influence on the world stage is little short of obscene.

Its time Britain joined the vast majority of the world’s nations and become a non-nuclear state. The cost savings would be merely an added bonus

2. A serious approach to climate change

For progressive people, the facts on climate change have long been understood. It will take a 40% cut in emissions levels on 1990 levels by 2020 merely to give the planet a fighting chance of averting the 2 degree rise in global temperature that will cause catastrophes across the developing world whose effects will be felt everywhere. In addition to these emissions cuts, those nations that have contributed most to causing global warming – like Britain – have a clear, historic obligation to give developing countries the aid required to deal with its effects. These are the strict criteria by which any defensible UK climate policy must be judged.

3. An end to aggression and occupation

It is Britain ’s policy towards Western Asia that has brought the country’s reputation into the deepest disrepute under New Labour. But the shame of Iraq and our supporting Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon needs to be seen in a broader context. Decades of interference in the affairs of the world’s primary energy producing region have served only to exacerbate conflict, nurture tyranny, retard societal development and internationalise insecurity. Here more than anywhere else, it is time to make a decisive break with Washington. A progressive British government would not invade and occupy countries on the other side of the world, arm an aggressive and expansionist Israel, or cosy up to the various Middle Eastern tyrannies.

4. Withdrawal of arms trade support

In a country that claims to have learnt from the wisdom of Adam Smith, the quasi-mercantilist coddling of the British arms industry by the nanny state seems incongruous to say the least. The questionable efficiency and value for money gained from supporting the industry is significant enough at a time of economic hardship. But beyond this, the fact that government controls fail to prevent our exports from falling into the hands of known human rights abusers renders the practice fundamentally at odds with basic human values. A genuinely progressive government would transfer the public resources used to prop up the arms dealers into research and development for green technology..

5. Reining in the financial sector

If progressives are interested in making Britain a decent and responsible citizen of the world, then we can not forget that the recession born on Wall Street and in the City of London had repercussions right across the globe. International trade shrivelled as credit flows seized up, firms went bust, people lost their jobs and demand plummeted. Britain ’s policy of laissez-faire financial regulation has decidedly international consequences. It is in the world’s interests as well as our own that this failed economic model is read its last rites, and replaced with a way of doing business that does not pose a living, systemic risk to the global economy.

Let me say that I do not for a moment expect Labour or any other party to adopt these policies of their own volition. Progressive victories in politics have always been won by popular struggle from below, never as gifts handed down voluntarily from above. If these are the policies that progressive people across the left want to see enacted, then the only way to make that happen is to organise and make our voices heard.

David Wearing is a PhD researcher at the School of Public Policy, University College London . His articles on British foreign policy have been published by The Guardian and Le Monde Diplomatique

Ban Private Schools

They perpetuate the gross inequalities in the UK; this can only be addressed if they are erased completely.

The two other alternatives which might be more palatable to our politicians are taxing the life out of those that can afford private education (almost impossible), or paying teachers in state education more than those employed privately to drain public schools of their best resource. We do this in many other public sectors to attract the best talent, so why not in education?

Abolish the Monarchy.

Antiquated, expensive and utterly pointless, as well as perpetuating the idea that status and prestige are a privilege of birth.

Abolish the honour system

Not only is this system open to abuse, but we are an international laughing stock, giving out orders for an Empire that has long ceased to exist.

Roll out London Living Wage nationally

The very idea that anybody should be forced to live on 5.73 an hour should be abhorrant to any UK citizen.

Ensure that no person, financial institution or business can borrow money more than they could possibly ever pay back.

The idea that some financial institutions were borrowing up to 50 times against their assets is ridiculous, in what is clearly a doomed strategy.

Equally, 125% mortgages?!

Our guest writer is Peter Carrol

I would like to see a comprehensive and joined up plan to deliver on the Climate Act targets – one that includes serious money from HM Treasury, and that looks again at the UK’s airport expansion plans which threaten to scupper efforts in all other sectors of the economy.

I would love to see a reverse Freedom of Information Act to free data unless withheld.

The ending of departmental attachment in the civil service (so all staff can apply to move freely across service).

An office of budget responsibility.

Abolition of income tax on minimum wage earners.

Swedish schools with a really chunky pupil premium.

Jonty Olliff-Cooper is head of the Progressive Conservatism project at Demos

I’d like to see more of an emphasis placed on intensive interventions for at risk children in early years. I thought Gordon Brown’s plan for a network of homes for single mothers was unfairly characterised as “gulags for slags” at Labour Party Conference. We need more like this; showing that the state has a role to play to ensure that the most vulnerable are cared for and also to show that we won’t stand by when young children are being mis-treated and abused.

The UK is one of the developed world’s most unequal societies – how do we address that absolute inequality into the next decade? One means is the classical way via the taxation system (a redistribution from rich to poor) and the other is to aim to create more equal economic outcomes from our companies. One way to do so is to incentivise employee ownership of companies that, as Robert Oakeshott, researcher on employee ownership, argues “entails a movement from business as a piece of property to business as a working community”.

Cooperatives such as John Lewis show that employee ownership can work. Employee ownership implies social emancipation as workers are members of a team, and puts the scale of earning differentials at the control of the workers – a good check on excessive executive pay.

I would invest seriously in community-based sentences, more half way houses/intermediary options between prison and the community, more residential places out of custody for offenders with mental health problems, close all womens prisons and place women offenders in open residential schemes (hardly any have committed serious or violent crimes) – this would rehabilitate more effectively, could meet the public’s demand for punishment if done right, and save money because we know these programmes cut reoffending rates.

Rick Muir works for ippr

We need a Green New Deal – funding domestic and industrial renewal energy capacity, public transport works and additional eco-housing capacity  – to sustain economic recovery whilst combining collective and green values at the heart of government.

And of course 50% tax for earners over £100,000.