The Phoenix Pledge — A Public Commitment by Candidates
A PERSON’S WORD MUST REMAIN VISIBLE AFTER THEY ARE ELECTED.
Vox Populi est Sui Iuris — The Voice of the People is Sovereign.
Public information draft V001 — 5 November 2026
Contents
- Why there is a Pledge
- The proposed standard pledge
- What signing means
- Pledge, membership and endorsement
- The permanent public record
- Not a constitutional law
1. Why there is a Pledge
Every Phoenix candidate is asked to acknowledge the Party Constitution and its protected Founding Objective before receiving the Party’s formal endorsement. The Pledge records a candidate’s personal commitment to pursue that objective openly, lawfully and consistently.
The Founding Objective is to secure permanent constitutional Standing Power directly for the electorate, including Electoral Assent, and to make the practical means of exercising the power genuinely operational.
The Pledge does not transfer sovereignty to candidates or Party officers. It records what a named person promised voters when seeking to represent them.
2. The existing Phoenix Pledge — 12 September 2026 wording
The following is the original proposed Pledge text recovered from The Phoenix Pledge, dated 12 September 2026. It is reproduced unchanged, rather than silently replacing its substantive commitments. The document predates the final Party Constitution of 29 September 2026 and the later Manifesto changes, so it must be reconciled and approved before it is adopted as the standard new-candidate instrument.
I pledge my support to the passage of the Sovereignty Referendum Bill, to be carried through to Third Reading regardless of any change in Phoenix Party leadership. This commitment is made to the Party's Founding Objective itself, not to any individual leader, and no leader — present or future — has authority to release me from it or to redirect it.
I affirm that the standing power the Referendum would establish, and the transfer of Royal Assent that accompanies it, are intended to be permanent from the moment they are won — incapable of being surrendered again by any later vote, referendum, or Act of Parliament, regardless of the reasons offered for doing so. I understand this irrevocability is deliberate: not a claim that the electorate cannot be trusted to choose freely, but a recognition that no process can reliably distinguish a free choice to surrender this power from a manipulated one, and that the only safeguard which cannot itself be defeated is one that admits no exception. I further affirm that this choice does not belong to any one generation alone: every generation that follows would be forced to live without this protection, exactly as generations before were forced to live without it, and no single generation is equipped to foresee what a future generation may need it for — and so no single generation has the right to give it up on their behalf.
I affirm that the Party I stand for serves the electorate, and does not rule over it — in this and in everything else it does, before the Referendum, during it, and after it, whether the Referendum succeeds or fails. Where the electorate has clearly and directly expressed its will, that expression governs, and no office I hold gives me, or anyone, authority to act contrary to it. This is not a commitment limited to the Referendum's own outcome; it is the standing the Party holds toward the people it exists to serve, at all times, without exception.
I make this pledge as a public, dated, and permanent record. I understand it cannot be edited or withdrawn once signed, and that breaking it does not remove me from my seat — no mechanism can compel that — but does mean the immediate and public loss of the Party's endorsement.
This is the archived draft text, not an assertion that named candidates have signed it, nor an amendment to the final Party Constitution. A signature binds only the actual wording the signatory agreed to, and no existing signed pledge may later be edited.
3. What signing means
A candidate signing accepts the Party Constitution, the protected Founding Objective and the specific undertakings set out in the signed version of the Pledge. The signed record identifies its wording, version, signatory and date.
Each candidate must be free to understand and examine the commitment before signing. The Pledge is not a secret instruction from the leadership and cannot be silently changed after admission or nomination.
4. Pledge, membership and endorsement
Under clauses 3 and 4 of the Party Constitution, admission requires acceptance of the Founding Objective; repudiation or abandonment of that objective automatically terminates membership. Factual review determines whether the trigger occurred.
The Party can refuse or withdraw its selection or future endorsement for a material breach of its Constitution. These are Party consequences, subject to applicable law and internal procedure.
A Party pledge does not automatically vacate a parliamentary seat or legally compel an MP’s parliamentary vote. Parliamentary responsibilities and applicable law remain distinct.
5. The permanent public record
The original signed Pledge must remain as an immutable historical record. Later statements, disputes, findings, resignations and corrections must be separately dated and linked to that original, never substituted for it.
The Pledge Register is intended to provide public access to authentic commitments and their subsequent status. No candidate should be listed as having signed unless a valid signature and record have actually been received.
View the Pledge Register page.
6. Not a constitutional law
The Pledge records obligations arising under the Party Constitution; it does not add to, amend or independently determine those constitutional rules. The proposed universal Constitution belongs to the People and must be lawfully approved; a candidate’s signature cannot approve it on their behalf.
Read the governing Party Constitution and the Candidates page.