THE total attendance at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival last

week was up on the previous year. This was despite a rise of a tenner in

the cost of purchasing a club badge which set one back #50 a day; on

Thursday the enclosure was so packed you could not have bent down to

pick up a dropped betting slip.

As we watched the Gold Cup an Englishman next to me confided he had

placed #2000 on the favourite, The Fellow. I had a modest score on the

same nag and, as you are probably aware, neither of us will ever see

that cash again.

After the wretched horse had trailed in fourth the big gambler

shrugged: ''That's a pity,'' he said, without irony, and I was too

ashamed to moan about my losses.

His pal was more animated. ''Norman Lamont performed better than

that.'' Whether this was meant as a compliment to the Chancellor is open

to question, but our Norm has made a few new friends on the racing

circuit.

They say if you count the number of helicopters in the centre of the

course and the Rollers in the Cheltenham car park you will have a fair

idea of the economic state of the country. If that is so, and it is as

good a barometer as any, then the sun is peeping, ever so coyly, from

the clouds.

I took time off from the important business to hand to watch the

Budget debate and, for most of the time, I wished I had not. Among Mr

Lamont's many sterling qualities are a strongly developed instinct for

survival, yet his voice sounds like a hair drier and he delivers a

speech as though he is reading aloud from the telephone directory.

On one matter Mr John Smith, the punters' pal, and myself are in

complete agreement. The Budget Purdah, in which the Chancellor dare not

give a hint of what he might be contemplating, should be ended. Wee

Norrie has nothing to lose by such a step.

Mr Smith has much to gain. If he knows in advance what the

Chancellor's speech contains his own response will be that much better.

On Tuesday he was rambling and repetitive, unlike the master of doom,

Gordon Brown, who had a whole day to set his features into a funereal

mould.

Sometimes you think the political world has turned upside down. I have

no deep-rooted objection to paying a bit more in indirect taxation and

national insurance to help the Third World, or even those at home who

need a shilling for the gas meter, though I did not hear a lot of that

from my party's candidates at the election.

Labour and the Lib-Dems were the ones who put these sort of ideas

forward. So, now that the Tories have followed their advice, why is

there such an outcry? Because there has to be, stupid, that is the way

we play the game.

Let us imagine Mr Lamont had announced the creation of a million new

jobs, a huge rise in benefits, and a wealth tax on the filthy rich -- I

do not rule any of these out in future -- would Mr Brown have been

caught singing You Are My Sunshine? Graham Gooch will be Shaver of the

Year first.

The row about the forthcoming VAT on power is typical. When a

politician says he has no plans to introduce an increase it is a bit

like being told he has no plans to die -- true, but not to be depended

upon.

Watch my lips, every policy can be changed. Is there, by the way, any

good reason why the British should not pay this tax on domestic fuel

like almost everyone else in Europe? Don't tell me about shivering

pensioners: that is an argument for exemptions, not one that should be

used against the general principle.

I often wonder if the yah-hoo school of politics -- and there is no

better example than the current state of hostilities between Labour and

the SNP -- actually serves us well. No, I do not yearn for the grand

coalition, but I do think the adversarial style, the extravagance of the

language, the pretence that one side is the font of all wisdom, the

theatricality of it all, is absurd. When people say, and they do, ''you

politicians are all the same'', they have a point.

As I was driving up the motorway (being overtaken by caravans and

mini-vans doing 90mph; I thought speeding was being taken more

seriously, it certainly kills enough people) I listened to a French

journalist talking about their election.

The citizenry, she said, were sick of the Socialist government but

they were far from ecstatic about their right-wing opponents. There is

apparently a kind of Spitting Image show on French television which

lampoons all politicians as dishonest idiots and the public thinks the

portrayal is just about accurate.

''In fact, there is little difference between them on how to deal with

the economic ills of the country,'' she concluded. Truth to tell, the

same applies here.

There was something said by Mr Lamont, before the Budget speech, with

which I definitely agreed. He talked about ours being an ''alibi

society''; everything which happens has to be somebody's fault and we

bay for heads to roll for it is such fun to see the mighty humbled.

Would the BBC really have been a better organisation minus John Birt?

Is this a more upright and trustworthy Government since David Mellor

left?

I do not pretend to be the world's greatest economist, but surely we

can see that the problems of homelessness and unemployment and economic

misery know no national boundaries. I happen to believe that for years

we in the West paid ourselves more than we actually were worth, and that

we grossly underestimated the effect which new technology would have on

the job market. If there has to be blame, we all share it.

Mr William Waldegrave, with whom I had the pleasure of dining

recently, told me that Mr Michael Heseltine had accurately predicted the

Government's eventual majority before the election. Next time, says

Hezza, it will be about 60. Don't say I did not tell you.