SO COMMON SENSE has finally—and unexpectedly —prevailed on the principle
of TV coverage of elections. How it will work in practice will need to be judged over a period of months—clearly there are still difficulties of presentation which can only be resolved by a study of the programmes as they appear—but there is no reason why the gloomy prognostications of the Daily Telegraph ('a fireside free-for-all which will put Eatanswill in the shade') should be fulfilled. With the calcul- able exception of the Telegraph, the press took a very reasonable view of the subject; in fact, I would think it was Fleet Street ridicule which finally demolished the ludicrous Tory arguments —notably that a candidate might be prosecuted for failure to return his TV appearance among his authorised election expenses. There were some fine examples of the left hand not knowing the activities of the right : the Director of Public Prosecutions gave the Labour Party the green light at the same time as the Attorney-General was showing a red to the Conservative Central Office on, apparently, the same issue. As a reSult of this confusion, an apocryphal story is circu- lating in Rochdale : that when Lord Hailsham rang' the Attorney-General to ask for a ruling, Sir Reginald replied, 'Hang on a moment; 1 must just consult my solicitor.'
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