Hold politicians up to standards

I think that it is high-time for what political parties say and put out to be held up to higher standards. We attempted to do this during the recent campaign with our 'Clean campaign pledge', asking other Parties to buy in to a voluntary code of conduct, in effect: http://www.clean-campaign-pledge.net/ . Martin Bell backed our pledge, but sadly the other Parties refused to sign up. I think now that government should act. Commercial corporations cannot say whatever the hell they like in their ads and get away with it: the Advertising Standards Authority, weak as it is, has some power over them.  I hope that readers will consider the arguments in favour of regulating political speech to exclude patently misleading claims, graphs etc., and to help instead to inform our citizenry and begin the hard task of getting people to believe that politicians are not just shysters and cynics who believe that all's fair in politics...