Party manifestos

Above: Kevin Maguire in today's Daily Mirror discusses the publication of the party manifestos - another of the ritual moments of an election campaign. Kevin Maguire also writes for the New Statesman. He appeared on this lunchtime's Daily Politics, making the point that new media is going to count for less in this election than most people think (which reinforces the view that what works in America will not necessarily work here - the two cultures are different).

Even so, Kevin Maguire does have his own Twitter account: http://twitter.com/kevin_Maguire



Above: report about investment mis-selling (appeared some days ago in the Guardian).

If it is possible to draw up rules preventing financial mis-selling surely it must be possible to have rules to prevent political mis-selling?

My own suggestions are:

1) If a politician is found (by a panel of judges) to have made false or misleading remarks during an election campaign he can be struck-off, fined or imprisoned.

2) All proposals published in manifestos must be measurable, costed, and have an independent evaluation measure.

3) Key manifesto proposals (involving constitutional changes, taxes, irreversable social changes etc) to be formally identified as such.

4) All key proposals in the manifesto of a winning party must be carried out in full within the parliamentary term (failing to do so could lead to a charge of political mis-selling - see item 1).

5) No new key proposals to be introduced within a parliamentary session without a national referendum.

6) Funding of political parties to be limited to one £200 donation per individual party member.

But who is going to take any notice of me...