Spectator's Notebook
0 NE of the few good things about this so far oddly unreal election campaign is that there are signs that the conspiracy of silence about sterling and the exchange rate is at last beginning to break down. It would be going too far to say that it's now possible to discuss devaluation (The Unmentionable' in Government circles, as Henry Brandon has reminded us) in a calm and rational manner: this is still the last taboo in a permissive age. But at least we're moving in that direction, and may even get there once the election is over (or still sooner, perhaps, now that the Liberals have had the courage to get off the fence).
This alone would make the election worth- while. As Fred Hirsch; financial editor of the Economist, wrote in his excellent book The Priand Sterling a few months ago: It is indefensible and intolerable that the economic and political performance of a Government should depend so much on a technical financial question that is not only universally misunderstood, but deliberately dis- torted. A silent censorship on -discussion of the exchange rate by those who understand its economic implications has been accompanied by its elevation into part of the national heritage by those who do not. The result has been to befuddle not only the public but many economic ministers and financial officials themselves, who can no longer discount their own propaganda. But in the end it is the misleading of the public that represents the greatest danger. For it is this that makes politicians prisoners of their own myth.
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