Why Full Fact will be tracking Government pledges - and why it matters
On the steps of Downing Street on 5 July, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer promised a mission of national renewal that would turn the page on decades of plummeting trust in politics and public service.
We at Full Fact have long called for urgent action on improving trust because we know how critical it is to our society. But today, with more than three-quarters of the traditional first 100 days elapsed, we need more information about how the Government intends to measure its progress and deliver on these goals.
National renewal is quite a broad and imprecise target. Most people would struggle to explain exactly what it means, or how they would know if it was being delivered. In many ways, it represents a feeling rather than a deliverable goal.
Unfortunately, intangible or ambiguous targets make fact checkers like us rather sceptical. And we’re not alone - YouGov found that 75% of the British public think that parties who win elections go back on most, nearly all, or all of their manifesto promises. Starting from this position of incredibly low public trust, politicians simply can’t afford to be unclear about how they’ll measure their missions. Setting out how you intend to keep your promises - and telling that story consistently - is every bit as crucial as actually keeping them.
Full Fact can help. Our expert fact checkers, policy leaders, and editors are gearing up to launch a new tracker to clearly measure government progress delivering on many of its missions, promises, and pledges.
Work on this project is under way. We’re looking carefully through the Labour Party manifesto to scope which pledges we should track (and which are trackable in their latest form) and how the information should be presented. We’ll be working with independent experts across the full range of policy issues to ensure we draw on the best evidence when tracking pledges. We are also developing ways that we can integrate our experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help crunch the data and allow us to track multiple pledges in real time. And, as always, we’ll ensure that we present the full story in its proper context so that our readers understand not just what is promised, but how it stands up historically and comparatively.
This is not a simple job. Our preliminary work has found nearly 300 pledges that we think could be trackable, ranging across topics such as health, justice, and climate. While we’re reasonably clear on how many of these should be measured, many others will need closer inspection, in-depth research, and collaboration with independent experts before we can get a definitive answer.
Our supporters will be vital in helping us fulfil this goal. We’re asking everyone who’s committed to more transparent, accountable politics for the UK to donate to Full Fact so that we can hold the Government’s feet to the fire with the scrutiny, expertise, and experience that only Full Fact can bring.
This is a chance to break with the past. Full Fact has never tracked Government pledges at this level of detail before. We’ve chosen to do so now because, like the Prime Minister, we think that catastrophically low trust in politics degrades the democracy that we all cherish. But Mr Starmer should know that trust needs to be earned. We hope he takes this opportunity to show his workings.
Team Full Fact