Manifestos – by which we are shortly to be seriously afflicted – are viewed with grave scepticism by mostly everyone except those who painstakingly compile them. Manifestos are seen as comprising a nauseating mixture of promises for which the resources do not exist to fulfil, promises which will be forgotten as soon as power is gained, promises which those who proclaim them have no intention of implementing and promises which changed circumstances will in any case prevent ever being carried out. In any case there is no manifesto that cannot be summed up in the phrase “a chicken in every pot, gold in every pocket, a skill in every hand, a rainbow in every future.”
I think myself that all efforts to define impressively tidy and comprehensive schemes in a very untidy world are profoundly misguided. The blueprint theory of politics, or indeed economics or business or anything else, makes no sense to me. Master plans as soon as they are announced, begin to be eroded by changing circumstances
