An interesting new poll from Politics Home of 1,200 voters has found that less than half of Labour voters expect the party to fulfill its manifesto pledges.50% of Labour voters think it is fairly, or very unlikely to fulfill its manifesto pledges, which is a tellingly high number. The equivalent figure for Conservative and Lib Dem voters' confidence in their parties are that 22% think their Party is fairly/very unlikely to fulfill its manifesto pledges.
While not wanting to disect voters' confidence in the political parties they support, this does smack of inevitability.To imagine that there would be no fallout, or decline in trust in the Government, from its shabby decision to renege on its manifesto pledge to give voters a say on the Lisbon Treaty would have been naive in the extreme.
There are other factors at play here to be sure, but manifestos are a question of trust and abandoning manifesto pledges are a betrayal of that trust. If half of Labour voters now feel unable to trust that the Party will deliver on its promises, then those MPs that voted against holding a referendum can have no-one to blame but themselves if they fail to win back their seats at the next election.
Well yes quite, but what about elastic Dave's own EU-turn (not to mention the LibDem's)? When it comes to Lisbon, they all broke their promises when the chips were down.
ReplyDeleteDave batted himself into a corner methinks. To be fair to him, currently because of the mess that Brown has left us in, the economy is the priority along with Afghanistan. Should things start to pick up in a few years time then I hope that CMD will revisit the EU, tell them to foxtrot oscar and we are going it alone. What are they going to do? Invade us?
ReplyDeleteThanks Malleus Europae and the special one.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, David Cameron and the Conservatives did vote in favour of a referendum when the issue was on the table and always qualified their promise for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty ('if still not in force' and so on), but we certainly share your general frustration with the whole thing.
It would certainly be interesting to see 2005 data to compare pre-election trust levels in manifesto pledges with regards to all the major parties. Anyone know of such data?