Politicians’ Promises

It is unwise for politicians to make definite promises, because circumstances can change rapidly. However they still do it quite frequently.

How binding should such promises be? Where lection promises are concerned, I distinguish winners from losers.

I don’t think losers should be bound at all. Their policies having been rejected by the electorate, they should be free to think of something else.

On the other hand a winner had better have a very good reason for breaking a promise, and would usually deserve a black mark even then.

It is still hard to apply those rules to Britain today.

Labour definitely lost the recent General election, so that leaves them free to change any policy they wish.

The Conservatives won, but only up to a point. As they had to form a coalition, they can be expected to make some concessions to their partners, and therefore not to carry our the full programme on which they fought the election.

The Liberal Democrats are in a particularly odd position. They lost the election badly, coming third and losing seats too. That would let them off all election promises, were it not that they have joined the government. As it is, joining a coalition and making the necessary compromises is arguably just the sort of policy revision one expects of a loser. They can therefore be expected to obtain changes to some Government policies that go some way towards meeting some of their promises, but on matters where they disagree with the Conservatives it would be quite unreasonable to expect them to get all or even most of their policies implemented.

Currently being debated is the Liberal Democrats’ election promise to abolish university tuition fees. The fees were introduced by a Labour Government, and supported by the Conservatives. The proposal to increase them came from an enquiry set up by the recently departed Labour government, so it is not a matter on which Liberal Democrats are likely to be able to make much difference. I forgive them for breaking that promise.