I suspect that, for many of you, last week’s Budget is already a dim and distant memory.

There is little doubt that Budget Day has lost much of its aura. It used to be preceded by what was known as Budget Purdah.

This meant that Treasury Ministers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made no speeches and gave no interviews for months before the Budget itself.

There were no leaks.

Indeed on one occasion during the Attlee Government after the war the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, was forced to resign for disclosing some details to a journalist just minutes before he delivered the Budget itself.

All that has now gone out of the window, Budget Purdah is a thing of the past.

Leaks – almost always intentionally inspired by the Treasury itself – abound.

Spin goes into overdrive.

These changes mostly date from the election of the current Labour Government in 1997. But they are symptomatic of deeper changes which have taken the place in the relationship between politics and the media which go back much further than that.

One of the biggest changes that has taken place since I was first elected in 1983 is the change in the news cycle.

We now live in an age of 24/7. Numerous television channels churn out the ‘news’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They demand a constant diet of information, preferring those nuggets which can attract the often misplaced label of “Breaking News”.

The conventional wisdom is that politicians should co-operate with the media to supply the stories themselves if at all possible, or instant reactions if the story is not theirs.

This is a real impediment to good government. The business of government is often boring. It can be a real grind. It has little to do with the next day’s or the next hour’s headlines.

I hope the next government, whichever colour it proves to be, will feel strong-willed enough to resist this pressure. I hope that it will set its course and stick to it, refusing to be deflected by the media storms which will inevitably blow up. It will require real determination.

The recent behaviour of our current government is far from encouraging. I devoutly hope its successor does better. 

© Hawkinge Gazette and Channel Coast News 2010