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As the Labour Party unveil their five election pledges and the Tories pledged £8bn extra to the NHS, voters have been asked to remember that a pledge is not a promise.
Politicians are concerned that the electorate have been confused in previous elections and made the schoolboy error of assuming that pledging something and promising it were exactly the same thing.
“A promise is when you’re absolutely, definitely going to do something”, we were told.
“Whereas a pledge is more of a ‘we’ll give it a whirl, fingers crossed our Libdem coalition partners won’t stop us but no harm done if they do’, sort of thing.”
“You see the difference?”
“Hey, we’ll try. What more do you want?”
Politician pledges
Pledges made by various parties include the Greens pledging to introduce Citizens Basic income, the SNP pledging the oil price would be back over $100 by now, and UKIP pledging to try as hard as they can not to round-up immigrants and put them in camps.
Meanwhile The Conservatives have pledged not to leave Boris Johnson alone with your wife, at least not for long enough for him to “get up to some whoops-a-daisy”, as he puts it.
Unusually for a major political party, the Liberal Democrats today revealed their “absolute, unbending promise” to cut a deal with anybody at all to stay in government.
