The search is for a usable public truth
Politics already keeps a record. Most of us never read it.
Votes are published. Interests are declared. Manifestos are written down. Speeches are transcribed. The failure is not that the evidence does not exist. The failure is that the electorate has been invited to treat judgement as a once-a-cycle mood, rather than as a continuing civic duty.
Not a colour. A contract.
Truth-seeking here is not a view, a side, a rosette or a chant. This site is politically agnostic. Democracy produces winners; the people who win then claim the right to speak for everyone in the seat — those who voted for them, those who voted against them, and those who did not vote at all. The only questions that follow are public ones: did they stay consistent with what they asked to be judged on, do they still fight the corner of that place, and is the work worth what the public purse pays? Belief is yours. The record is not.
Elector and taxpayer are not the same person
The franchise is wider than the income-tax net. A pensioner on the state pension, a parent on Universal Credit, a student, a disabled person on PIP, a carer, a low-paid worker under the personal allowance — all can vote. All live with the consequences of housing, the NHS, crime, care and benefits. Calling this “a taxpayers’ website” would quietly write them out of the jury.
Public money is still the second claim, and it is a real one. Salaries, offices, and ministerial travel come from the Consolidated Fund, not from a whip-round of higher-rate taxpayers. A £34,000 departmental trip is not only an insult to people who filed a self-assessment. It is an insult to the pensioner whose bus route was cut and to the claimant whose assessment was delayed. Stewardship of common funds is owed to the whole public, not to a tax band.
So the site speaks to two overlapping groups without collapsing them:
- Electors — anyone eligible to vote. Their job is to keep reading the record between elections.
- The public purse — everyone who depends on, or contributes to, what that purse buys. Waste and capture are scored because they steal from a shared pot, not because only taxpayers may complain.
The voter’s half of the contract
Representation is not a subscription you forget until the renewal notice. An MP is hired to speak, vote, declare conflicts, and pursue a programme they asked to be judged on. If we only look up when a campaign video arrives, we outsource the whole appraisal to whoever shouts loudest that week.
This site exists to make the opposite habit cheap: open the record of the person who sits for your place, see the evidence, and keep looking after the count is done.
The MP’s half of the contract
None of this is a demand that politicians be saints. It is a demand that they be treatable as professionals. In any other paid job, the work product is reviewable. Targets slip; people explain; next quarter is different. Artificial intelligence does not invent a secret dossier. It reads what is already public — Hansard, division lists, the Register, pledge trackers, published posts — fast enough that the review can be continuous.
That is a benefit to the honest member as much as a pressure on the careless one. If the same rules apply to a minister and a backbencher, a well-documented vote against a whipped line can raise a consistency score. A viral clip cannot.
Why “source of truth” is a discipline, not a slogan
A site that weighted scores by how many people clicked a name would not be a record. It would be a heat map of fame and fury. Nigel Farage can win Clacton and still be red on declaration rules. Richard Burgon can be little-searched and still be green on consistency with his own stated positions. Mixing those facts with page-view counts would destroy both.
So the Commons Account separates three things and refuses to blend them:
- The score — integrity, promise-keeping, performance, role-adjusted.
- The evidence — the votes, declarations and pledge statuses underneath.
- Public interest — how many people opened the card. Displayed later, if at all, as a scrutiny counter. Never as a weight.
The seat is not a postcode on a whip list
A pipeline, a refinery closure, a sewage outfall or a green-belt application is where most people meet the contract. If the file only reads Hansard it will flatter the diligent lobby-fodder and miss the person who did, or did not, fight the named scheme in their place. That data is public: council minutes, inspectorate lists, petitions. It is not a mood poll.
The same duty follows the money out of Westminster
Devolution does not retire the contract. It moves it. A metro mayor spends public money under a deal the rest of the country also pays into. If accounts are late, if a 10-year plan has no annual waypoint, if the hoarding implies the cash is a personal gift, the public file should say so — quarterly, against the powers that office actually holds. That is not a verdict on whether devolution is good. It is the minimum needed so an elector who did not vote for the mayor can still see the work.