Tuesday 4th May 2010. With two days to go until the general election, the Liberal Democrats seemed poised on the verge of the success they had been dreaming of for decades. With the help of a popular leader and headline-grabbing promises on key issues, their support levels had sky-rocketed to nearly 25%, and the party looked set to regain a prominence they had not had since the Second World War. Fast forward five years and that dream is in tatters, with the Lib Dems frequently polling lower than UKIP and with the Greens snapping at their heels, while recent Ashcroft polls suggest that Nick Clegg is in serious danger of losing his Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour.

So what went wrong? The obvious answer is that the Lib Dems broke their promises. Their campaign was built on a number of key pledges that, once elected, they failed to uphold. The sheer strength of the backlash against the Lib Dems is significant; after all, they are not the first to fail to realise their manifesto, especially after being forced to collaborate with a party as ideologically disparate as the Conservatives.  The main issue of their campaign, the capping of tuition fees, was one which won the hearts and minds of many voters. It was never a feasible policy in the midst of an economic downturn, facing a likely hung parliament where the Lib Dems would be the minority party. The case of the Lib Dems in 2010 is an example of the inevitable disappointment that comes when minor parties, unused to the daily challenges of governance, campaign with promises that, however attractive, they are later unable to deliver. With power comes a hefty reality check.

This sobering truth is not confined to the UK, and it is one which continues to appear. The economic crisis which has stalked Europe has caused many voters to turn their support towards outlying parties in the hope of radical change. In Greece, the far-left party Syriza have just taken control of parliament on the back of their highly popular ‘anti-austerity’ policies and their promise to reduce Greece’s colossal debt. However with the campaign over, the fervour of their pledges is on the wane. Even before the election, upon taking the lead in the polls, Syriza’s rhetoric began to soften, as they realised that the task of reducing Greece’s debt, which currently stands at over 170% of GDP, while remaining part of the EU and keeping the Euro, is almost an impossible one. Recent surveys show that over 75% of the population of Germany, Greece's largest single creditor, are vehemently opposed to cancelling the debt.

Syriza’s response to this resistance has been to shift their approach, firstly by rejecting any original intentions of acting unilaterally, and, on being elected, by advocating a renegotiation of terms with more powerful EU member states and the European Central Bank regarding their debt payment schedule. The new party line is that the debt will not be written down, just settled on Greece’s terms, with payments directly relating to economic performance: the greater the growth, the more they will pay. This is a notable back-pedal from the radical promises that brought Syriza to power, but a necessary adjustment if Greece is to remain on working terms with the rest of the EU. Similarly, it is likely that if Syriza are to make any future gains on the subject of debt, these will likely come at the cost of concessions by scrapping their plans to implement radical anti-austerity measures, or risk losing the Euro and their place in the EU. Thus, within less than a week in power, the two policies which brought Syriza to power – cancelling the debt and scrapping austerity – are already vanishing before their eyes.

In the UK, the rise of UKIP is largely due to their policies regarding EU membership and immigration. However, this is only one area of their political programme. As Nigel Farage has mentioned on various occasions, a UKIP government would aim to reduce the public debt by increasing NHS cuts while keeping all its services intact, as well as advocating an increase in military expenditure. When looking at UKIP’s policies as a whole, it seems difficult to see how a UKIP government would deliver on reducing the debt while preserving and increasing the level and quality of services.

Meanwhile in Spain (where a general election will also be held this year), the brand new party Podemos has achieved second place in the polls with a cocktail of promises that seem unrealistic at best. These include restructuring public debt, increasing minimum wage while limiting the working week to 36 hours and reducing retirement age to 60. Considering the severity of Spain’s economic crisis, achieving all of these pledges will be near impossible – a reality of which Podemos is well aware. As election success becomes a reality, they are starting to modify their policies, with retirement age now promised at more conservative 64. 

But what does this mean for us? With the May general election approaching, it is important to remember that we have a great gift: democracy and the freedom to choose who governs us. But with this also comes the equally important responsibility to critically scrutinise parties’ pledges before casting that vote, in order to avoid disappointment. As 2010 showed us: in politics, if it sounds too good to be true, it often is.