In my view, manifesto pledges are like contracts with the electorate. It sets out what you plan to do and why the public should tick the candidate of your party at the ballot box – and if you break a term of that contract, there will be a cost to pay. This doesn’t mean that one hundred percent of everything on a manifesto can be put into practice, as pragmatism prevails, with ever- changing fiscal rules to stick by, as well as other procedures which may hinder making the pledge a reality. The Sunday Times have reported that Labour are planning to quietly ditch a manifesto commitment on gender change in order to ensure tensions with the Trump administration are at bay, as well as attempting to decrease Reform’s vote share, which seems to be on a upwards trajectory. Even though I personally disagree with the ditched policy, it does create an interesting matter of principle in politics surrounding manifesto commitments.
The simple fact is that political parties have become too comfortable with backtracking on manifesto commitments to the point the electorate do not know what or who to believe. What we have seen with Labour, and Keir Starmer more specifically, is the practice of saying whatever is necessary to get in, even if you know you cannot deliver on it when the time comes. In his Labour leadership bid, Starmer promised to scrap tuition fees, they have now been raised under his watch. Starmer would have well known that scrapping tuition fees is a policy that is way too radical to implement, especially in the timeframe that he specified. He chose to make the pledge regardless.
The reason Reform UK are running away from the other two main parties in the polls isn’t just because of appealing policies, it is because the electorate have nothing to base Reform off of to indicate that they will not keep to their word as there has never been a Reform government. The Conservatives and Labour have year’s worth of time in government for the electorate to use as a case study. It is a sorry state of affairs politics is in that the electorate would much rather roll the dice with the uncertainty of Reform than stick with the two largest parties in British politics because they don’t believe what they’re saying is actually going to happen.
The Conservatives must realise that the reason they’re on the backfoot isn’t because of no major policies being announced or having the wrong stance on an issue – it is because their credibility does not stack up. Kemi Badenoch could get everything right when it comes to policy, however until the issue of credibility is resolved, or at least in a better state than Reform’s, it will be to no avail.
Labour must understand that they are in office now – everything they say or do will be looked at under a microscope. This especially goes for pledges which were on a manifesto that Labour have a strong mandate to enact. This mandate will be diluted the moment that Starmer allows the programme for government to deviate too drastically from the manifesto which they won on. By the time the next election comes around Labour cannot have a track record for tampering with their manifesto after they have won on it, or the electorate will put them in the same exact position that they put the Tories – they may like the policies which have been announced, but the question is can they believe they will be acted upon.
If the answer to this is no and the electorate cannot trust them, that only works in Reform’s favour, as they will be the party that will be seen to be the most trustworthy and the ones who will actually act on the pledges they are making. Labour must remember that even though they had a landslide in terms of seats at the last election, their vote share is in an extremely fragile position. Anything such as a credibility issue could be enough to work in Reform’s favour, along with any other momentum that Farage picks up by the next election.
Reform will be reluctant to make an electoral pact with the Tories’, not just because they don’t want to make any major shifts on policy, but because the moment that they make a deal their credibility is just as good as the Conservatives’ is at this moment – that being in a very bleak state.
