Writing in the Law section of the Times (30 April) Gary
Slapper reminds us:
"After an election when all is said and done, it is
usually clear that much more has been said than will be done. But there is no
legal remedy against politicians who fail to keep their promises. In a House of
Lords decision in 1983, Lord Diplock declared that elected representatives
should not 'treat themselves as irrevocably bound to carry out pre-announced
policies contained in election manifestos'. So someone selling a used car is
under tighter control than someone selling the future".
The obvious example of getting away with not honouring a
promise is the LibDems "pledge" to abolish tuition fees. But there
are many, many others. Here's a Labour one from 1994:
Begging will be consigned to the history books under the
next Labour government, Labour's spokesman, Nick Raynsford, told a meeting of
the Hampstead and Highgate Labour Party in Swiss Cottage. Mr Raynsford, MP for Greenwich, said that begging was the
most disgraceful indictment of the present government's policies. 'Our task has
got to be to elininate begging in London and create a memory of how bad life
was in the late 80s and early 90s'." (Camden New Journal, 7 July 1994).
In the event it was Nick Raynsford who was consigned to
history. Meanwhile, despite a period of 13 years of Labour government, begging
has grown, reminding us how bad life still is, twenty years later, in the mid
2010s, whether under a Tory, a Labour or a Coalition government.
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