Welcome to Brig’s political accountability tracker, which tracks whether or not the UK’s top leaders have been keeping their promises (which often just turns into an opportunity to slag them all off).
DISCLAIMER: This does not claim to be a morality tracker, and just because a leader has a high consistency mark, this does not mean that their actions or beliefs can be praised for their moral soundness.
Rishi Sunak:
Sunak has been under fire recently for his poor attempts at “stopping the boats”, a promise he has repeated in attempts to reassure us of his competence. He claims to have “cleared the legacy backlog”, which refers to a buildup of old asylum claims that were made before June 28 2022 (just a few weeks after Boris Johnson stepped down). Sunak promised to clear this, and claimed that he had. That’s a lie. Figures released on the same day that Sunak claimed this showed that there were 4,537 cases remaining on the backlog. Overall, the backlog is 98,599 cases, a decrease from earlier this year, but still far off the goal Sunak claims to have achieved. He earns some points because whilst he has lied, his beliefs themselves have stayed consistent.
Consistency mark: 2/10
Kier Starmer:
Green New Deal Rising, an anti-climate change campaign group, have criticised Starmer for his commitment (or lack thereof) to fighting climate change, and his promise to dedicate £28 billion per year to investing in clean energy. He claimed that the majority of this plan would be funded by borrowing, and if fiscal rules do not allow it, the plan will not go ahead. As well as this, Starmer’s ten pledges from campaigning to be Labour leader in 2020 have been deleted from his website. His inconsistency with them was what inspired this accountability tracker in the first place, and if you need an action to sum up the current state of the Labour Party, that would be it. Starmer can erase his pledges, but voters will not forget them, and the fact that he is attempting to deny their existence proves that he is feeling the guilt he deserves to feel for abandoning the once left wing policies of Labour.
Consistency mark: 0/10
Humza Yousaf:
Yousaf is sticking by his criticism of Israel and has pushed the UK government to influence Israel to stop committing actions that he has called “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”. He remains consistent in his solidarity with Palestine. Other than that, there is not much to measure Yousaf on. He promised to make Scotland an “international leader in human rights”, yet conversion therapy for transgender people remains legal, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill remains effectively scrapped, and whilst this was not entirely in Yousaf’s hands, he claimed to prioritise “keeping our human rights out of the hands of Westminster for good.” Progress on abortion clinic buffer zones was made, but overall, Yousaf has not delivered what he promised the more progressive SNP members who voted him in.
Consistency mark: 5/10.
4th year Politics and Journalism student.
Secretary for Brig
The Herald Student Press Awards Columnist Of The Year 2024 (which sorry i’m still not over)
