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Originally Posted by Damien
That's unworkable though. How do you easily define a promise and when is it ok to break it? People are quite partisan and these things are difficult to define. For example £350 million on the NHS is an 'aspiration'. The Liberal Democrats promised not to raise tuition fees but they didn't actually win the election. What do you then do about changing circumstances which make promises made in good faith untenable?
Even the fact this has been related to Corbyn's tuition fees promise is dodgy. The manifesto doesn't actually promise existing students will get their debt wiped out and that promise seems to be a mixture of a vague 'we'll see what we can do' answer from Corbyn to the NME and other Labour politicians promising it. Would it still count as illegal in that case?
It just seems to stem from an unhealthy desire people have to criminalise their political opponents. Obviously I do not think people should lie to win elections but with the definition of what counts as a lie so disputed it seems a bad idea to make it illegal. Everyone will just be setting the police on each other.
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We had this discussion before, about what the people who invented democracy thought and did about lying politicians, there doesn't have to be wholesale jailings there has to be the threat of it to show we're sick of them and their antics and to remind them that they work for us not the other way round, throwing in a other and and it might also put a stop to the shysters like peter mandelson being sacked for dishonesty being brought back in a new role after a few months, I've never understood it, a minister proves to be highly inappropriate in one department can in a matter of months be considered competent enough to run another different one, the fact that in the main their figureheads telling others to implement policy makes it even worse
