In the recent by-elections in Redbourn, Sandridge and Wheathampstead, it was somewhat baffling to see the Liberal Democrats once again failing to take any accountability for their own policies on housing.
The Liberal Democrats nationally support a top-down national housing target of 380,000 per year. That’s 80,000 a year more than the targets which their local party has frequently railed against. A Lib Dem Member of Parliament elected at the next General Election will be expected to vote for higher top-down housing targets in Parliament than have existed under the Conservatives. That is the simple reality of their policy, adopted in September this year.
Instead of owning that policy and seeking to win support from the public, they have once again asked local people to vote for them on a democratic mandate to scrap top-down targets. I don’t want to mince words here: they have won public office – again – on promises that they have no intention to keep. That is utterly shameful and a stain on our democracy.
And despite their own leader locally openly telling Councillors that they shouldn’t let the greenbelt be a burden to their plans for massive house-building in St. Albans District, they still refuse to own that position in elections, preferring instead to hide behind housing targets which they would make higher if they took national office.
Politics is bigger than winning or losing elections. It requires politicians to have an honest conversation about what they would do with the democratic mandate that they are given, and then do their best to implement that mandate once they win. Sometimes that isn’t possible, but making promises you have no intention of keeping opens the door to populism and undermines your ability to govern.
You may not like my party, you may think that the route to a better politics is to prise us out at all levels, but those politicians who are promising things they have no intention of delivering would do well to remember: once the people you blame for your own broken promises are gone, people will realise that you were part of the problem.
