Tuesday 12 February 2008

New Labour Manifesto Promises are: “Not subject to Legitimate Expectation”

This has been aired elsewhere - but quite frankly can’t be drawn to the attention of the voters often enough, so I make no apology for raising it here.

UKIP took Gordon Brown to court over his reneging on New Labour’s manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution now renamed the Lisbon Treaty.

The case was brought by former New Labour activist, Stuart Bower. He stated:

"From the papers I have been sent, it seems that the Prime Minister is denying the pledge made in his government's manifesto. Surely this is a desperate act as everybody knows the commitment was made and that is why many people gave their votes to his party.

"To me, it is a clear case of breach of contract. They made a written promise and broke it. That was a contract between the government and the people. “

Everybody does know the commitment was made - and it certainly was a factor that many of those who in the end voted New Labour took account of when they voted.

What is (hat tip to the ‘Is there more to life than shoes?’ blog) soooo worth noting though - and seems to be of such little interest to MSM, was Gordon Brown’s Barrister; who blithely informed the court that: "manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation "!!

In other words, the Prime Minister’s personal representative, is saying in open court, that the electorate can’t really expect any manifesto promises to be kept.

Now we all know that it may not be possible to deliver of a manifesto promise, due to unforeseen circumstances, including the non co-operation of opposition MPs, but there is a world of difference between that and actively wriggling out of keeping them, deliberately avoiding keeping them.

Even these days, we at least expect them to make the effort.

So there you have it. You don’t just have to rely on personal observation any more - It is official.

You would have to be a mug to be swayed by the blandishments contained in any future New Labour’s manifesto - you really can not expect them to even attempt to honour them.

Gordon, the Pork Pieman, may have been reading his Machiavelli again; Perhaps: “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”.

3 comments:

Simon Fawthrop said...

They were prepared to invoke The parliament Act to get the hunting ban through because it had been a "manifesto pledge".

Anonymous said...
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CFD Ed said...

It may be that: “Some manifesto promises are more equal than others…”