Ed Miliband said today of the student fees debate: "Before the election, they promised families and young people that they would oppose any increase in tuition fees"
That's true Ed, but then before the 1997 election Labour said there would be a vote on a fairer electoral system. They won that election and failed to do this.
Before the 1997 election Labour said they would abolish the House of Lords. They won that election and failed to do this.
After the 1997 election John Prescott pledged to reduce road transport dramatically and he failed utterly and miserably. His only achievement was his magic trick of turning his minsterial car into a bus, perhaps to encourage greener transport...
Before the 2001 election Labour said they would not introduce tuition fees, then they did.
It wasn't a concrete pledge but I doubt a single Labour voter supported that party in 2001 in the hope that they would drag this country into a disastrous, oil-fuelled war of revenge the consequences of which will continue to reverberate for decades to come.
Before the 2010 election Labour supported a referendum on a fairer voting system, now they oppose this because it doesn't favour them.
Before the 2010 election, Labour Chancellor Alastair Darling pledged to address the deficit through swingeing cuts equivalent in severity to what the coalition has implemented. Now Labour politicians decry any suggestion of this.
Do you really want to talk about broken pledges? If you do, we've got 13 years to consider. Labour broke countless pledges over that time but perhaps the biggest crime of all is how little they did when they had the power to do so much.
Before 1994 Labour had some principles. I didn't like them but at least they were there to be seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment