David Cameron won general election with series of lies? Tell us something we DON’T know!
Yvette Cooper is only half-right. Cameron certainly lied to win the election – but Labour failed to beat him because Labour did not effectively answer those lies.
Labour’s five-year-long failure to deny the claim that it had spent too much while in government is the perhaps the most obvious example.
But Cooper has chosen to highlight promises that were made to the people of the UK, which have been broken in the very short time since.
David Cameron won the general election on the basis of a series of lies, Yvette Cooper said on Thursday, as she highlighted a series of broken promises by the Conservatives.
In a sharpening of her rhetoric against the Tories, the Labour leadership contender accused Cameron of ripping up nine pre-election promises. She said he had changed tack on areas ranging from child tax credits to housing and rail electrification.
Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “We may have our own leadership election going on, but Labour can’t allow David Cameron to get away with this and carry on like nothing has happened – he is taking the British public for fools. We have to confront him directly on every lie and broken promise – that’s exactly what I plan to do in parliament and across the country.
The nine areas identified by Cooper are:
- Cuts in child tax credits. Cooper said Cameron denied during the election that he would cut child tax credits. She said Osborne, the chancellor, unveiled £4.5bn of cuts to child tax credits in the budget which would hit women twice as hard as men.
- Cuts to child benefit after Cameron said during the election there would be no cuts beyond a two-year freeze. Cooper says it will now be subject to a four-year freeze.
- Cancellation of rail electrification plans.
- Downgrading of the number of affordable homes due to be built. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said 14,000 fewer homes will be built.
- Delaying of a decision on a new airport runway in south-east England. Downing Street says it is standing by its commitment to reach a decision by the end of this year.
- Delay in the introduction of tax-free childcare from 2015 to 2017.
- Shelving of an election pledge to give public officials three days off work to take part in volunteering.
- Delay until 2020 in the introduction of the social care cap.
- Reversal of pledge for greater government transparency after launch of review into freedom of information.
Source: David Cameron won general election with series of lies, says Yvette Cooper | Politics | The Guardian
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One of the biggest lies which was allowed to grow out of proportion and, by many people, became accepted fact, was the myth that the Labour Government was responsible for the Banking Crisis and the subsequent recession. Unfortunately the Labour leadership just didn’t forcefully quash this Tory lie right from the start. They just let it grow.
Yes – exactly.
Why I keep asking myself, where is their backbone? I remain totally confused.
But it also took media complicity, especially the BBC. The lack of investigative journalism and the lack of will to challenge each and every Tory lie, in particular Grant Shapps and IDS, was spectacular by its absence.
The Catherine Shuttleworth incident still brings bile to my throat, and I hope that karma will visit each and every person involved in this thoroughly despicable and underhand incident.
But I don’t see a groundswell to change the status quo without something happening that is so serious that makes a cover-up impossible.
Here’s hoping that it won’t be long in coming because it’s way overdue.
BTW, I remember each and every government since Anthony Eden and I’ve never, including MT, experienced one that I loathe quite like the present.
It wasn’t just the lies, although the “Woz Labour wot dunnit” sticks in the craw, but the sheer incompetence in opposition to lies as they were spun in the HoC. Just two out of many were during PMQs when Cameron lied about the bedroom tax, not once but twice, on different occasions. In both, Miliband did not challenge them with any form of factual response. Once, maybe, but twice? Who was doing the opposition briefings in preparation for asking the questions?
I know Corbyn does not want any element of personal abuse in the leadership election, but every time I see the other three – all up to their necks in the neocon Blairite administration and the debacle of opposition after – the word “hideous” comes to mind. Not as a personal attack, but their policies and their belief that they somehow “own” the party, its soul and its lifeblood. Corbyn has led the groundswell of opposition. It could have been anyone on the left of the party to be honest. Corbyn is straight as a die, though, without tarnish by association with the Blairite crew.
She missed out that after severe flooding a few years ago he visited the affected areas and promised that money was no object, the problem would be solved fully and immediately. 3 months later he cut the budget. Also he and Osborne both promised during the Olympics that they would take immediate action on Tax Avoidance, but have still done nothing.
And make us turn on ourselves and the people slipping through the gaps. How have the Tories, Bevan questioned this, managed to appeal to people whom the Tories intend to harm?
Why are many of us turkeys voting for Christmas? if Labour can suss this maybe they can turn around the great ‘caring conservative’ myth.
Why did Cooper not vote against Tory welfare reforms then, along with all bar 48 labour members?
Well said Louise;
The reason that so many on the right of the party have gone along with the mythology that even they don’t believe in, is careerism, as we used to say in the good old days, the careerists in the party could easily be in any party, and as time marched on some of them did, Reg Prentice even crossed the floor straight to the Tories.
Tony Blair created a party in New Labour that was based solely on patronage, this of course was deliberate and became endemic as time went on, also with time these politicians became tainted by association, which is why they continually spin instead of expressing explicitly what they support.
You don’t have to scratch too far below the surface to see how shallow they all are, and how complicit they were with everything from privatisation to the selling off of state assets.
In 2010 David Cameron brought out a fancy flier giving his “contract” to the people showing 12 promises. He broke ten of them and Labour did not pick it up. Tory lunatic “austerity” policies were adopted in order to avoid forcing the rich to pay their way – Labour did not dare pick that ball up because they too did not want to alienate their financial backers. Tory started dissembling the NHS – Labour couldn’t say too much as they were the first to start privatising it. Tory spending exceeded in five years what Labour has spent in 13 years – Labour did not pick up on it. Tories offered the electorate a referendum on the EU – Labour decided THEY didn’t want one and screw the electorates wishes, likewise with the issue of Trident and renewables investments like Colwyn Bay. Tory offered more austerity – Labour didn’t reject it except to say that the “Mansion Tax” would fix all when it clearly wouldn’t. Labour did not propose any policy that would show how a mixed economic strategy with funded investment in a time when the borrowing rate was a it’s lowest, would promote growth and still haven’t except for JC’s economic policies. Labour cut off their noses to spite their faces in rejecting the SNP coalition possibility and their utter contempt for Natalie Bennetts economic strategy left them where they really belong – hard right of centre and bout as much use as a chocolate fireguard. They deserved to lose and they will be in the wilderness in 2020 with people like Burnham and Cooper and Chukka, why ever would I vote for a bunch of right wing middle class liberals calling themselves the Labour Party?
Yes, the Miliband / SNP debacle made me think the the children’s story of Brer Rabbit – in this case the Tory party being the rabbit, outwitting the fox.
If the Corbyn leadership does happen, I suggest that by 2020 (or sooner, given the wafer thin Tory majority) Labour may be a party worth voting for, so never say never. Getting rid of the Chukas and Kendalls may well be a matter of them just huffing off, hopefully. The FibDems could probably take them in.
Or they could just disappear from mainstream politics altogether.
That would be too much to hope for given the narcissistic tendencies of the lot of them. Nice thought though!
Time and Time again I said that ‘Rabbit’ Milliband, why is he still in Labour safe seat why has he not been tossed out of Labour on his dumb ass? would not be acceptable to Voters; they spoke and Labour lost the Election….Tories only won by default
It’s not necessarily a question of journalists not challenging IDS, rather it s a question of IDS not being available to the media prior to the election. Manifesto’s should be legally binding documents. When governments’ fail to address them they should be up for recall by the electorate. If I was to buy an item not fit for purpose from a shop, I would, under the auspices of the Trade Descriptions Act, be entitled to my money back. The same principle ought to apply to elected politicians’.