Right and Wrong

There is not as much in a name as there used to be: the times defy the old labels of right and left, capitalist and socialist. Still, there were those who found global meaning in the stunning upset engineered by Britain's Conservative Party (see THE WORLD). The election of Ted Heath, following the victories of Georges Pompidou and Richard Nixon in recent years, may indicate some Atlantic longing for the more traditional positions their parties occupy.

But an equally important lesson of the results may be the reminder that vox populi still has the ability to surprise. Britons aged 18 to 20 were voting for the first time in a general election--just as Americans in a comparable age group may be casting their ballots in 1972. Contrary to expectations, the young Britons made no important difference for Labor. In an age of computers, all but one of Britain's polling firms were almost preposterously wrong. Politicians need to learn anew from time to time--as in the 1948 U.S. presidential election or in the 1969 French referendum that prompted Charles de Gaulle's retirement--that electorates cannot be taken for granted.

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