John Horgan: Election manifesto policies should never be confused with promises

Is it too much to expect, as the pre-election nerves start to jangle, that the political parties would stand back for a moment , refresh their acquaintance with some of the most basic rules of elections and of political life generally and encourage their acceptance by the electorate?

The first of these is that no party can deliver on all its policies unless it has an overall majority in the Dáil - and sometimes not even then. As Harold Macmillan once memorably said, "events" keep on getting in the way of policies, plans and strategies.

This is particularly relevant in a situation in which, it can be said without fear of contradiction, no political party in the next Dáil will hold an overall majority.

The second is intimately related to the first, and involves a crucial distinction between policies and promises.

Political parties, like individuals generally, should never promise something they cannot be sure they will be in a position to deliver. The problem here is that for many decades political parties have tended to elide the important distinction between policies and promises, and have, usually by omission rather than commission, encouraged the electorate to believe that they are identical.

In these circumstances, politicians can hardly complain too loudly when these important distinctions, which they may have connived in obscuring, are ignored or minimised by an electorate which has been encouraged to abandon common sense, the lessons of experience, and any knowledge of electoral mathematics it may have once possessed. The ability to count is a primary requirement of politicians. It should also be a primary ability of voters.

The answer to this problem requires an outbreak of political honesty by all the parties. This involves making it clear to the electorate, as never before, that what their manifestoes offer are policies, not promises, and that every manifesto has to be considered in the context, not of some imaginary financial cornucopia or vote bonanza, but of what Prof Brigid Laffan has memorably described as "the politics of restricted choice".

It would also involve the parties making it clear to the electorate, again as never before, the fallacy of the belief that politicians are not ??? the only people who have to make hard political choices. Indeed, the hardest political choice to be made, and the one with the greatest political consequences, is that made by every individual voter on the placing of numbers after names on the ballot paper. We get the politicians we deserve. Nobody else puts them there.

No overall majority

After every election in which no single party has won an overall majority - as has been the case in this country for almost four decades - the politicians have to work with whatever tools (in other words, votes and seats) the electorate has given them.

In such circumstances, two other political issues come into play. The first is the willingness, or unwillingness, of any political party to enter negotiations with any other political party with a view to forming a government. This is an area in which, I would argue, any pre-election statement made by a party with its full authority can reasonably be regarded as both a policy and a promise, and to renege on such a promise would merit the accusation of betrayal.

‘Red line’ issues

The second is whether any of a party’s policies should be defined as a so-called “red line” issue, ie an issue which will govern all negotiations about government formation in the sense that the party concerned will not join, or will cease to support, any government if that “red line” has not been accepted, or has subsequently been breached.

It is open to any party to define any of its policies as a “red line” issue, as long as it is prepared to accept the consequences (which might easily include failure to elect a Taoiseach and a second, immediate, general election). And a consequence of such an approach would be to make such a party, if it breached its own “red line”, uniquely vulnerable to accusations of betrayal.

This is why, I would argue, political parties should be as flúirseach as they like with their policies going into the next election, as niggardly as possible with their promises, and more emphatic than ever on the crucial difference between the two.

A significant advantage of this approach is that it puts the ball firmly back where it properly belongs - at the feet of the electorate, whose responsibility includes not only voting, but familiarising themselves with the issues and policies involved.

And this is also why - finally - the responsibilities of the media with regard to the description and discussion of the issues is also crucial.