One of the many depressingly ignorant things which voters, and perhaps more so non-voters, like to repeat about politicians is that they are forever making wild promises they have no intention of keeping, writes Enda O'Doherty.
Not so. Promises as such are a bit old hat and the venerable custom of wholesale bribery of the electorate has largely gone out of fashion in this State since the heady days of Jack Lynch, to be replaced by a more calculatedly modest stance ("A lot done, more to do") - in keeping, perhaps, with recent dramatic rises in national sophistication.
And while it is true that in Britain Michael Howard is promising, ahead of Thursday's election, to make things a damned sight more unpleasant for immigrants and asylum-seekers and to slash the tax bills of the wealthy, who is there who does not believe him? The biggest electoral landslide of recent British history, New Labour's first victory in 1997, came courtesy of what must surely have been the most modest political slogan of all time, as delivered to the public by D:Ream's soporific ditty "Things can only get better". For a country whose social fabric and culture had been torn apart by 18 years of Toryism, 11 of them under Mrs Thatcher, this was not a wild claim but the merest common sense.
Tony Blair's only important promise to the electorate - and even that was recalibrated by the PR men as a "pledge" - was that the much desired change the electorate was gasping for would be largely cost-free: "Labour's Five Year Pledge. No Increase in Income Tax Rates".
This pledge - which, incidentally, Blair adhered to scrupulously, seemed to me a bad idea, and so I argued in this very space in April 1997, pointing out in particular that New Labour's declared intention to be not just "tough on crime" but "tough on the causes of crime" implied a targeted programme of spending to repair some of the appalling social damage inflicted by Thatcherism. But progressive taxation and social spending, the settled political credo until then of all even mildly social democratic parties in Europe and America, were not part of the New Labour recipe. Blair spoke openly of his Labour predecessors' terms in office as "the bad old days", rubbished the many achievements of what he dismissively termed "Old Labour", and promised to govern Britain henceforth from that mysterious ideological vacuum "the radical centre". And since he looked immensely sincere as he said all this, I believed him.
There were those who did not. Indeed, a more senior Irish Times commentator argued with great sophistication a few days before the poll that a daring political deception was being practised on the British electorate by which Mr Blair, with an acute understanding of the Thatcher culture and "a ruthlessness of which only the truly great are capable", was simply camouflaging himself in the apparel of the enemy to "invade the citadel" and destroy it. And this, he added somewhat waspishly, was something so plain and obvious that "only a fool" could fail to see it.
So, an ingenious deception that only a fool could fail to see through. Well, eight years later here is one fool who is still waiting for the British PM to whip off his mask and reveal the grinning Bolshevik underneath. Which is not quite to say that under Blair Britain has simply had eight years of Toryism by another name.
It was quite understandable that any Labour leader after Kinnock should be wary of the power of the right-wing press. Blair and New Labour simply carried that caution to ludicrous extremes, courting the Sun and Daily Mail with populist rhetoric on crime and welfare spongers and pussyfooting around with silly policies on "academies of excellence", faith schools and "customer choice" in medical care. ("Did you have a particular chemotherapy package in mind, Mrs Jones?") The first term in office was not inspiring. There was some increase in social provision, but not enough for many people to see the difference.
Electoral participation fell from 71.3 per cent in the 1997 election to 59.4 per cent in 2001. In 2003 Gordon Brown increased national insurance contributions by 1 per cent, bringing in £4 billion to fund much-needed social expenditure, whose effects are now beginning to be felt in urban regeneration, shorter hospital waiting times and slowly improving schools in the most deprived areas. "A stealth tax," said the Tories. "At last!" said Labour voters. And then, just as things really were beginning to get better, Tony had to go off and do that Iraq thing.
And now, it seems, as Labour's lead shrinks to almost nothing in key marginal constituencies, many old Labour voters are thinking of voting Liberal Democrat or Green to "teach Blair a lesson". Now, I've nothing against Charles Kennedy. He is the most likeable of chaps and probably the only senior politician in Britain apart from John Prescott who, if he invited you for a drink, would actually have one himself. But there are two things that are quite obvious: one, the Lib Dems, not having any "targets" in deprived constituencies, don't actually have any policies on social equality; two, the only one apart from Tony Blair who is going to win this election is Michael Howard.
Eighteen years of Thatcherism is surely enough to do any country for a century. Eight years of Labour has only begun to repair a small part of the damage. Anger over Iraq is certainly understandable, but it scarcely justifies waltzing off into the night with Michael Howard. Left-wing Britain may well choose to cut off its nose to spite its face. But it could need that nose again some day.