I have just been reading a blog post on the site of Duncan Crow (Conservative Councillor for Furnace Green on Crawley Borough Council) about a misleading mailer put out by Labour in the local area
Now whilst I don't know the in's and out's of this particular case from my experience with the Local Council it is really not a surprise, I have always found the comments made in many political flyers to be very misleading at best and downright deceptive at worst. When I was campaigning I regularly read things that entirely mislead the reader and encountered many tactics like the one Cllr Crow mentioned where something that can not be accepted is proposed simply so it has to be turned down.
I have always wondered how effective this kind of dirty tricks campaigning is as I would hope that the general public would be too smart to go for this, but then as the people who do it keep getting elected I guess my faith in mankind may be a little too idealistic. But anyway my main reason of bringing this up is to say isn't it time that the contents of Political literature is checked for accuracy? I find it crazy that the Advertising Standards Commission do not have the power to check these things for accuracy, in fact you can make any outlandish claims you want and to hell with the truth (I call this the Lib Dem Model)
Going forward I would like to see not just the leaflets checked for honesty (With very harsh penalties for deliberately misleading voters) but I would also like to have all politicians held to account for the contents of their manifesto with an annual review where they would have to update the electorate on progress against what was promised, this doesn't mean that plans can't change as that would obviously hamstring the council to a policy that may be 3 years out of date but at the very least if they are not keeping their promises they need to stand up and say why.
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