The Coalition Broke My Promise

It is the perfect situation to be in. You spend months on the campaign trail promising the British public what you will do if you are elected. Even more importantly you make promises about what you will not do if elected.

Often these promises are about taxes. 'I will not raise taxes' a prospective governing party may bellow to the people. Or perhaps they are about keeping benefits. 'Child benefits will not be cut!' That ought to please the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the Child Benefit system, and the wider demographic of people who believe protection of children to be paramount in any modern democracy.

And it works. Well it sort of works, you poll relatively well and manage to get a fair share of representation in parliament. You cosy up to one of the other parties and you are part of that magical political term; a coalition government.

This may sound familiar, after-all both Australia and the United Kingdom are currently testing this new-found style of democracy. This will sound particularly familiar to voters in the United Kingdom. Myself and the rest of the electorate of this country sat and listened to the Liberal Democrats stressing the importance of keeping child benefits. Not cutting them. Not changing them. Not even making them means-tested. So imagine the dismay Liberal voters will have when they woke up today (October 4th 2010) to discover the coalition government is planning on stopping child benefits for anyone who are earning more than £44,000 a year.

Surely this will be damaging, breaking a promise a mere six months into government. But it isn't. This is the magic of the word 'coalition'. 'Oh it isn't us', protest the promise breakers, 'It is our dear coalition partners who want to implement this policy.' Magic isn't it?

How long will this work for? How long can the government break promises, and make unpopular decisions whilst coming out blameless just because they can hide behind 'coalition'?

The truth is neither party need give up the word, they can allow for the other party to imply they are to blame for certain policies so long as that other party allow the first party to blame them. I urge you to not allow the 'coalition' aspect of the government to forgive the government for breaking promises or establishing policies governments normally wouldn't get away with. Coalition does not give them the right to break promises.