Guardian UK: Politicians lie, but David Cameron's mendacity is breathtaking

[marmar]

Politicians lie, but David Cameron's mendacity is breathtaking
The Tories' long list of broken promises is worse than Nick Clegg's, and will haunt them far longer than expenses

Polly Toynbee
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 January 2011 20.29 GMT


Yesterday, former MP David Chaytor was jailed for expenses fraud, and next week's byelection marks the end of another MP's career for grossly over-stepping the mark. Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins might have won Oldham East and Saddleworth in May but was robbed by Phil Woolas, who told lies about his opponent in leaflets stirring race enmity. We wait to see if a local sense of injustice carries Watkins through or if the torrent of fury at Lib Dem betrayal of election promises emerges as the stronger force.

There are blogs and emails swirling around that call for ways of pinning politicians down, subjecting them to recall, scrutiny and condign punishments of all kinds. All politicians lie, that's the view. And of course they do, just like the rest of us, only more so. To operate a party system, so that we know what policies we are voting for, MPs must pretend to support things they dispute, like things they hate, and believe things they don't while uttering empty pieties they know to be nonsense. Political messages are black or white in an often grey world. Abandoning a measure of autonomy goes with belonging to a party: MPs should only resign over major questions, as too few did over Iraq. Strict obedience has become ever more obligatory as a gaffe-hungry media hunt down any minor frontbench deviation from the party line. But in exchange for this necessary equivocation by MPs, there should be a reasonable expectation that voters get most of the manifesto they vote for.

One of the worst ideas in circulation is to make manifestos legally binding, nailing parties to pre-election promises. The danger is that politics will increasingly end up in the courts, with judges, not voters, in charge. Democracy needs politicians to be judged in the court of public opinion. But you can see why people are thrashing around angrily for some redress – and not just those who voted Lib Dem. Most outrage is heaped on Nick Clegg, with his unctuous promise of a new, clean politics. He may always have been a neoliberal, but he stayed in the closet. Instead, his party was the safe haven for anti-political voters, keeping their hands clean by never supporting a party in power. No wonder Lib Dem supporters flee in horror: the "real world" he now claims to inhabit was never for them. Any junior coalition partner was bound to be steamrollered by Conservatives bent on shrinking the state. Lib Dem policies were make-believe mood music, never seriously designed to be implemented.

Far more shocking is the spectacle of Cameron and Osborne's unabashed, barefaced and premeditated mendacity. Begin with the great broad questions about which they so reassured voters. Three days before the election, Cameron said on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, "any cabinet minister … who comes to me and says 'Here are my plans' and they involve frontline reductions, they'll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again". Yet £81bn in cuts now rain down on frontline services. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/politicians-lie-david-cameron-mendacity-expenses