Promises, Promises …
Since its launch less than three weeks ago, the Petition to Parliament calling for a general election has amassed almost three million signatures.
Attention has focused on the petition’s goal; a General Election. Overlooked, however, is why those millions might have signed: “I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.”
Worldly-wise cynics will be incredulous that anyone expects politicians to keep their word or stick to pre-election pledges.
Promises, promises…
This week, after 33 years, Conservative Home founder Tim Montgomerie abandoned the Tory Party for Reform. The Spectator likened his defection to the ravens leaving the Tower. He told Talk the latest immigration figures helped make up his mind. The multi-million influx of recent years represented Conservative governments’ repeated broken promises.
Despite their detractors’ wishful thinking, the Petition’s signatories are not thick-as-mince British deplorables. They know full well that another election is about as likely as Bromley winning the FA Cup. Some might have signed to take the mickey out of the joyless Starmer government which suffers a permanent sense of humour failure. More likely, most wanted to express their sense of betrayal that Labour politicians have torn up the commitments they made to voters before 4th July.
As a lawyer, the Prime Minister would probably not be too troubled by forms of contract other than the legal. Few of us give trust-based agreements like promises much thought – until they are broken.
If the current Labour government has a moral compass, the needle never stops spinning. Ripping up their election pledges; falsehoods about the economy; a conviction for fraud; a relaxed attitude to plagiarism – to the dismay of all copyright holders.
The voters are never wrong. In July, they wanted the change that Labour was offering. The Party’s Manifesto was unequivocal and a reassured public supported it: “Our plan for Britain is a fully costed, fully funded, credible plan to turn the country around after 14 years of the Conservatives.”
Almost immediately, the Starmer government betrayed the trust invested in it by pensioners (Winter Fuel Allowance abolition), farmers (Inheritance Tax changes) and, in raising their National Insurance contribution, the country’s employers.
Labour claims it is sticking to their Manifesto pledge – lifted from the Conservative’s 2019 Manifesto – not to raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance, in a bid to protect “working people”. Becoming a non-working person because your employer can no longer afford to keep you on, might not be a tax, merely a life swept off course thanks to mendacious ministers.
In 2010, the Coalition found that Labour had bequeathed them a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. This surely puts the Government’s hysteria about the “£22 billion black hole” in context. Ministers’ claims verge on nonsensical given the country’s GDP, which last year in cash terms was £2,720 billion. This makes the fabled black hole 0.8 per cent of the UK economy.
If, as Labour says, the £22 billion represents how the public finances were completely out of control, why have no Treasury officials been sacked? Talking down the economy for Party political advantage has a real-world impact on business confidence and job creation.
For ministers to cloak themselves in faux outrage and blame the previous government for their policy choices is not leadership, but a refusal to take responsibility. Voters, who don’t like being taken for mugs, can see through ministers’ chicanery and hear their silence about the seismic economic impact of the pandemic and Ukraine.
Every person in this country is literally invested in the Chancellor of the Exchequer for their financial well-being. Already, she is rowing back on her promise to the CBI conference not to raise taxes. Or is she? Such an expert must know what she is doing. After all, as she stated in her 2019 book Women of Westminster, in 2010 she “left my job as an economist to become an MP.” (p.xvii)
Entrusted with the stewardship of our finances, the post of Chancellor demands the utmost integrity. Previous occupants of No.11 surely did not have to big up their CVs and neither were they outed by the Financial Times for plagiarism. Reeves airily dismissed this as a few minor errors over references: for those of us who have sweated blood to reference correctly, copying another’s work without attribution is intellectual property theft. Are her books serious or are they intellectual vanity projects?
Our ever-more litigious society relies on legal contracts. However, the “letter of the law” is only a one aspect of any contract. For example, first identified in 1960, the “psychological contract” between employer and employee goes far beyond the formal employment contract. It is based on intangibles such as mutual trust. When working well, both sides go the extra mile. The polar opposite is “work to rule”. Recognised by the TUC as part of industrial action, it involves doing the minimum required by an employment contract.
Cabinet members were happy to take freebies from Lord Alli, claiming repeatedly it was all “within the rules”. It is unlikely that these letter-of-the-law folk see any problem in breaking the trust that voters invested in them: after all, where’s the sanction?
Conservatives should be troubled that Tim Montgomerie has left the Party. All voters should be less concerned about the mythical black hole than about the ethical sink-hole that is opening up around the Cabinet table in No.10.