ELECTIONS smell like sausages. Or at least to me they do. The 1997 general election campaign brought a new crisis every day for the team at Conservative Central Office.

What, for example, should we do about the journalist who was shooting-up in the toilet of the Prime Minister’s bus? But nothing proved a more absorbing distraction than the sausage smell.

You see, we were all working round the clock, and providing staff with a cooked breakfast on site was good for morale. But when we did so, the whole building stank of sausages.

On television, all you could do was watch as John Major gave his dramatic “do or die” European policy press conferences. But the journalists in the room weren’t thinking Europe “do or die”. They were thinking: “Mmmm. Wonder if I’ve got time for a second breakfast?” We were still debating the canteen air-conditioning when the election suddenly finished. We lost.

So for me, elections smell like sausages.

As for the rest of the world, it thinks elections smell fishy. There is no more pervasive opinion in this country than that politicians lie. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that nobody will believe a single word that any politician has to say throughout the entire election campaign.

I bet you agree, and think there’s nothing much wrong with that.

So here’s my reply — I think that this is a deeply silly and lazy view. And although I think that too many politicians tell too many lies, I think that even this is pretty much your fault.

Let me start here — all politicians don’t lie, but, naturally, being a group of human beings, some do. You might think that the deepening distrust of politicians would discourage such people but, of course, it doesn’t. How could you be so foolish?

Because voters lazily believe that all politicians lie equally, there is no punishment for liars. Those who lie realise that both their lie and the truth will be disbelieved, and that even if they are caught out lying, voters will simply shrug and say “there goes another politician”. What is the result? More liars, more lies. There are other consequences — more promises and more disappointment.

Politicians are desperate to restore faith in politics. They want to be trusted and realise that they aren’t. So they try to make their policy programmes as specific as possible. They use contracts, pledges, “sack me if I fail” offers, binding promises and clear targets, all designed to demonstrate the seriousness of the commitments they are making.

Most people believe that all these things are worthless because politicians don’t do what they say they will. In fact, the opposite is true. These pledges are a problem because politicians almost always do what they say they will.

In his excellent book, 1 Out of 10, Tony Blair’s adviser Peter Hyman records his experience as a teaching assistant attempting to implement policies that he had previously inserted into Prime Ministerial speeches.

Times Recommends

• We have kit and leadership. Let’s go
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal
• Conferences — what a waste of money