All Governments end in economic crisis, or they would not end. Why else would the electorate bother to change the Government? There was no longer a recession by the time of the General Elections of 1997 and 2010, but no one remembers those Parliaments like that.
In fact, it was the Government that emerged from the 2010 Election that caused a double dip recession. People do remember that, but the Official Opposition had failed to oppose the austerity programme, so, 10 years after the Conservatives' failure to have opposed the Iraq War had robbed them of what should have been an easy victory, Labour likewise missed what should have been an open goal.
The oddity of Conservative Governments is that in addition to economic disaster, they also always end in moral collapse: Profumo, Poulson, "sleaze", and now what see today. The one for the record books about the present situation is that while the economy has been collapsed by a Budget that was never even enacted under Liz Truss, the mere suggestion of which caused damage that will not be fully repaired in any of our lifetimes, the financial corruption (no one cares about the sexual depravity anymore) goes back to a different but barely less recent Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Yet neither Truss nor Johnson is in office as nadir is being reached. What a time to be alive.
The Labour Party supported almost all of the mini-Budget and remains committed to most of it, while Keir Starmer is the most crooked frontline British politician in at least a generation. But we are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Who is paying for Boris Johnson's world tour?
ReplyDeleteThe State. I want to know why.
DeleteWhy else would the electorate bother to change the Government?
ReplyDeleteIt’s the opposite of the truth-electorates tend to stick with nurse for fear of something worse during economic crises-it’s only when the economy is strong that they feel able to take the risk of changing the government. As all political scientists found, voters are cautious and conservative in the voting booth but free to take a risk during the good times. That’s why Thatcher won a landslide in 1983 during recession with three million unemployed. Yet John Major lost by a landslide during a major economic upturn with high employment. Similarly, Al Gore lost to George Dubya Bush despite the previous Democratic President bequeathing him an economy growing at a rate in excess of 5 percent.
The same pattern is repeated everywhere. People tend to change governments only when the economy is doing well.
I have heard it all now. In particular, your hilarious version of 1997, which the Tories tried to tell themselves for a few years but then just stopped bothering, tells me for certain that you cannot remember the Major years. Lucky you. It is true that there was no longer a recession by the time of that Election, but everyone thought that there was, and everyone of the right vintage still does. The same goes for 2010.
DeleteIt is a fact that the British economy was doing well in 1997-it grew 5% that year.
ReplyDeleteJust as the economy was genuinely in trouble in 1983 (with unemployment soaring to 3 million in the wake of a recession) yet Thatcher romped home.
Love people who can't compute any facts that seem a bit counterintuitive,
Entire generations would tell you about 1997 and 2010, on both of which polling days it was true that there was no recession but the economic and political damage were already done, and some of us belong to a generation that was there on both occasions.
DeleteAll Governments end in economic crisis, or they would not end. Why else would the electorate bother to change the Government?
The Tories tried to talk about their "golden economic legacy" in the early Blair years, but there was a limit to how much ridicule even they could endure, and in any case they themselves probably never believed it. Most of them were delighted to be shot of the Major Government.
Since this is the blog that doesn't do facts, but here they are. When the Conservatives lost a landslide, the British economy had grown by 5% and Britain's GDP was third highest in the world. The reverse of the situation when the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide in 83.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, the US economy was also growing a rate of 5% at the end of Clinton's Presidency, yet his Democratic successor then lost to George Dubya Bush.
But no one remembers it like that. There really had been something approaching an economic collapse by the standards that had obtained before Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng rewrote the book, and everyone thought that there still was. The same thing happened in 2010.
DeleteIt is factually incorrect, but more or less everyone would tell you that Britain was in recession on both of those polling days. They would have told you that on those polling days; if you had suggested that the economy was remotely healthy, then you would have been laughed out of any pub in the country. And they would have told you the next day, as they would tell you now, that that was brought down the Government.
That is of course why Labour only won in 1997 by promising not to raise income tax and to match the Conservatives spending plans for the first two years.
ReplyDeleteWhen the economy is doing well, the Opposition can only win by pledging not to change economic policy too much.
I doubt that you were born. Labour had had that Election in the bag since the economy had tanked early in that Parliament, before anyone had ever heard of Tony Blair.
DeleteBlair's tax and spending promises were wholly unnecessary, politically as well as economically. Labour could have published no manifesto and still won.