Should breaking manifesto pledges be illegal?
The Politics Show
The New Statesman
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A frustrated listener calls for consequences over broken Labour promises.
Anoosh Chakelian and Rachel Cunliffe answer listener questions about UK politics.
In the mailbag this week:
- Should parliament impose legislation to force governments to honour manifesto pledges?
- Is it time to reform council tax?
- The Scottish independence referendum settled the question for "a generation". But what counts as a generation?
- How would politics be different if the House of Commons was a different physical shape?
Send in your questions at newstatesman.com/youaskus
Listen next: Why Starmer u-turned on Digital ID
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman. |
| 0:04.9 | Should parties be legally held to their manifesto promises? |
| 0:09.0 | Will council tax ever stop rising? |
| 0:11.3 | And should the House of Commons be a dodecahedron? |
| 0:13.7 | I'm Anusha Kellyan and this is Daily Politics from The New Statesman. |
| 0:17.4 | Joining me today to answer your questions is our associate political editor, Rachel Cunleiffe. |
| 0:21.7 | Hi, Rachel. We've had some really interesting questions in this week. I love these questions. I love all our questions, but I particularly love this week's set of questions. Yeah, yeah, they are very good. Out of a good batch, I'd say. It was hard to choose this week. Yeah, so please do keep writing in. |
| 0:35.6 | And this is hot on the news of yet another U-turn from Labour this week, |
| 0:39.7 | a question from Paul who asks... So please do keep writing in. And this is hot on the news of yet another U-turn from Labour this week. |
| 0:39.6 | A question from Paul who asks, |
| 0:41.8 | can you see any obvious problems with imposing legislation |
| 0:44.9 | that forces political parties to honour their manifestos |
| 0:48.4 | at threat of being booted out of power if they don't? |
| 0:52.1 | OK, so clearly Paul is frustrated by Labor not sticking to |
| 0:55.3 | his manifesto. I feel Paul's frustrations too. I sympathise with the sentiment. |
| 1:00.4 | Yes. And we've spoken before, haven't we? Particularly when we thought that income tax was going to |
| 1:06.3 | go up in the budget. In the end, they went back on that plan about how corrosive it is to public |
| 1:12.1 | trust for politicians to make big statements in their manifestos ahead of an election and then |
| 1:17.5 | to row back on them once they come into power. Even if, as they explain, the facts have changed |
| 1:22.4 | and the circumstances have changed and there are global forces at play that mean that Britain |
| 1:26.3 | is in a different position, it's still something that doesn't do much to boost the already very threadbare |
| 1:32.6 | trust between the public and their policy makers. |
... |
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