at the end of the first full parliament under the austerity programme, the labour party and the conservatives were deadlocked in the polls. at the 2015 uk general election, the conservative party modified their commitment to austerity with a series of unfunded spending promises, including £8 billion of additional expenditure for the nhs. at the same time, the 2015 conservative party general election manifesto proposed making sufficient reductions in public spending and welfare to eliminate the budget deficit entirely by 2018–19 and run a small budget surplus by 2020. the labour party's manifesto proposed the less rigorous objective of reducing the budget deficit every year with the aim of seeing debt as a share of gdp falling by 2020 and achieving a budget surplus "as soon as possible". this would render the spending reductions proposed by the conservatives unnecessary, according to some analyses. the conservative party won the general election with an overall majority for the first time in 23 years, which was unexpected by most polls as they had predicted another hung parliament. political commentator patrick wintour argued that one of the reasons for labour's loss was its lack of clarity on the cause of the budget deficit. anti-austerity protests followed the election result, but post-election polling for an independent review conducted by campaign company for labour mp jon cruddas indicated that voters in england and wales did not support an anti-austerity platform, concluding: "the tories did not win despite austerity, but because of it".