Politics

Promise them nothing

Wilfred Sendai'

Discussing Napoleon's Marshals, the Duke of Wellington once said: "They plan their cam paigns as if they were making a brand new set of harness. It's all right, until something breaks. I make my campaigns of rope. If Something breaks, I tie a knot."

Personally, I have always thought that the Duke was underestimated as a politician. His' advice is certainly relevant for politicians today. If Mr Heath and his colleagues want the point underlined as they lay their plans for the next general election, I recommend another remark, this by Winston Churchill: "It is a good thing to look ahead, but unwise to try to look further than you can see."

These observations came to mind when reading Mr Patrick Cosgrave recently declaring that the Tories in 1970 were "the best prepared and best educated Opposition in the country's history." No doubt they were. Yet few governments, even Labour governments, have been forced to reverse more abruptly judgements made when out of office.

British governments since the war have suffered from a surfeit of pre-election planning, from an obsession that a party going to the polls must present the electors with a detailed prospectus of everything it proposes to do in office. All have been forced by circumstances to renege on a lot of commitments, discovering, in Macmillan's phrase, that they had been trying to catch trains with last year's Bradshaw. Nevertheless, the electorate has now been

Conditioned to expect from the parties the Production of 'The Programme,' as a piece of essential election ritual, despite the litter of broken pledges which has marked the trail of everY government since the war. Now there is one very simple way to avoid breaking Promises. It is not to give any. No doubt the left will regard this as a Monstrous piece of reactionary immorality. aut the sin, 1 reckon, is not so much in breaking promises as in giving them, when

there is no certainty that they can be carried oat.

It is time, therefore, that the politicians Stopped giving promises, for the whole of recent experience is that they cannot possibly guarantee their fulfilment.

I look forward — admittedly with no great confidence — to the day when a party leader will have the nerve to go to the polls Proclaiming that he can promise nothing. I look forward — with even less confidence to the day when the people will elect to power a leader who has the courage and candour to dO that. Then we might be reverting to what was originally intended by the British Parliamentary system.

By all means let the men who seek election state their principles. Let them declare what

their aims are, what they would like to

achieve, how they hope to achieve it. But sPecific undertakings like, "We will cut taxation," should be renounced. Too often that one has been accompanied by other undertakings which could only be made good by increases in taxation.

For a long time politicians have been trying to reconcile this particular contradiction

shnply by printing money. In earlier days it

Was necessary to debase the coinage, which Was manifestly dishonest. More recently the

Process has been called inflation, and made to seem almost respectable, particularly when Contrasted with a wicked thing called 'defla

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The fact remains that the public promise most constantly dishonoured is that unerwritten by Mr J. B. Page on behalf of the ank of England: "I promise to pay the bearer °O demand the sum of One Pound."

bo not think that I am denigrating planning and research by Political parties, nor earnest endeavours by politicians to educate themselves. But what a disappointing conclusion to all the hard work alone by Edward Heath and colleagues prior to 1970 that he should get ooked on a pledge to "cut prices at a stroke." (I know he did not actually say it himself, but he allowed himself to get hooked on it, which was just as bad.) The process of self-education surely should 'lave revealed that this was one undertaking which no Government in a country like Britain, vulnerable to every shift of a world • etcnonlY, could honourably give. The retort that, if it had not been given the Tories would not have won, is not good enough. That sort argument really has debased the currency. f I am not convinced that the people would nail to grasp what is the most important :ittelity of any plan — the capacity to change it even drastically. Flexibility to respond to the unexpected opportunity or the unforeseen reverse was what the Duke of Wellington Was driving at. It used to be a good Tory Principle. aY bowing down to the graven image of T he Programme,' rigid and unalterable, the ;ories deprive themselves of a major advan Lage over the Labour Party. Labour has to

ye a Programme. Not because it is a good 'fling in itself, but because it is a device

y!hereby that absurd body, the Labour Party nference, seeks to control a Labour k)overnment in office.

Every Labour leader, and Harold Wilson

esPeciallY needs to spend far too much time tprYIng to escape from the shackles of the -„artY Programme. It is plain nonsense for the I.ories to waste time riveting a different set of shackles on themselves.