A poll conduced at the end of February by Ipsos-MORI for The Economist shows that the economy continues to be the public's most pressing concern. This is potentially a double-edged sword for Labour. The public still blame Labour, rather than the banks for the deficit. Moving beyond that will be easier said than done.
A poll conduced at the end of February by Ipsos-MORI for The Economist shows that the economy continues to be the public’s most pressing concern.
This is potentially a double-edged sword for Labour.
With the increasingly influential presence of Lynton Crosby in the Tory camp, not to mention the loss of the Eastleigh by-election, David Cameron will come under increasing pressure from Tory backbenchers to shift policy further to the Right.
Nothing new here of course.
An excellent (separate) piece for the Economist today notes that in the run up to the 2005 election, an emboldened Tory Right sought to “shift…emphasis [in the party] away from public services towards immigration, crime and, of course, Europe…”.
They largely succeeded, resulting in a calamitous electoral defeat for Tory leader Michael Howard in a winnable election.
Backbench ideologues rarely learn lessons from history, so expect Cameron to face similar demands as worried MPs sense weakness on the back of humiliations like that in Eastleigh.
Labour can, indeed, take a degree of solace from the prospect of the Tories scrabbling around to prevent their core vote indulging Nigel Farage’s protest party.
No more than a degree of solace, though.
While Ed Miliband has been wise to turn his attention to economic concerns of late in the form of (largely symbolic) policy proposals on the mansion tax and the 10p tax rate, Labour is still suffering badly when voters are asked about the economy, as a poll for YouGov this week showed.
Q a) Which party would handle Britain’s economy best?
Q b) Who would you trust more to run the economy?
| a) Which party? | b) Which team? | ||||||
| Con | Lab | Other/ Don’t know | Cameron/ Osborne | Miliband/ Balls | Not sure | ||
| % | % | % | % | % | % | ||
| Apr 2012 | 28 | 27 | 45 | 36 | 28 | 35 | |
| Jul 2012 | 27 | 26 | 47 | 34 | 31 | 35 | |
| Oct 2012 | 26 | 28 | 46 | n/a | n/a | n/a | |
| Dec 2012 | 28 | 27 | 45 | 37 | 26 | 37 | |
| Feb 2013 | 27 | 29 | 44 | 35 | 29 | 37 |
As Peter Kelner phrased it:
“Almost three years after Gordon Brown left Downing Street, more people still blame Labour rather than the Conservatives for the state of the economy and the public spending cuts that Osborne has imposed. Secondly, when asked who they trust more to run the economy, more people still prefer Cameron and Osborne to Miliband and Balls.”
While Labour is right to focus on the economy – it is voters’ main concern and Osborne is the government’s biggest liability – doing so is a double-edged sword. It is potentially Labour’s strongest area of attack, but it also risks a damaging boomerang effect.
Moving beyond the fact that the public appear to still blame Labour, rather than the banks, for the deficit will be easier said than done.
In the public mind, the party is still stuck in the Gordon Brown era, and the failure to win the argument in 2009/10 that it was the banks rather than the government which was to blame for the crisis still hangs around the party’s neck like an albatros.
142 Responses to “Labour is still struggling to leave the Brown era behind”
Newsbot9
The workhouse was more blatant that workfare, but arguably *less* damaging. Which is saying a lot. What’s really completely indefensible is not counting people on workfare as unemployed, though.
And the correct approach is to look at that in countries with lower crime rates, such as the Nordic countries. And that involves *far* fewer jails, which are expensive crime-generators. Only the most serious of criminals should be going to jail.
Newsbot9
Rationing actually lead to many poorer people having a decent diet for the first time. And indeed, it was a situation better than today when people are increasingly unable to afford food and heating.
People are working longer hours today, and the economy is flat-lining. Really, trying to defend the current situation is fairly futile. And given the Tories are privatising hospitals at taxpayer expense…
Mick
I noticed that rationing irony. Still, most people were glad when it finished.
And I’m not extolling today’s circumstances as such. Hardly an advert is it. But there are ways of looking at stuff and it’s quite good to lock horns on ’em from time to time.
Mick
Workfare’s hardly as bad as the workhouse. Families were split, they were like proper old jails and nobody got anything if they didn’t grind themselves to the ground for it. Even the dirt-poor saw it as the lowest rung to exist in one of those.
But yes, if you’re on workfare you’re not employed. If firms can suddenly find a gap for you to fill, then they should pay a wage. Tescos and others have declared record billions in profits in recent years. So they could at least chip in.
And I’ve noticed many leftists of many stripes extol the ways of the Vikings. With a high dependence on social security, large public sector and generally high state bureaucracy and such, it’s certainly a Red dream. Yet there’s one mammoth difference to my eyes – Scandinavian countries have always seemed self-contained and insular. Seems they save for themselves and spend on themselves. Madness to us to pay half our wages in tax (and I’d bloody refuse), yet our culture has been different. Scandinavians export, we import. We import goods, services and even foreigners. We have the EU to take into direct account, with all the crap that brings. Western European nations seem completely open-ended, so people here would work better with low taxes and basic (yet good) public services. Anything more, we’d pay for ourselves. For us that’s independence.
______________
‘If society is culturally and politically homogeneous, the law can indeed be used as a tool for social change and does not have to deal with political conflicts in society.’
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1012541
One flaw with Scandinavia – bring in people from outside, having no desire to play ball and things get tricky: http://www.debatepolitics.com/europe/90032-sweden-islamist-bombs-go-off-government-blames-victims.html
http://fjordman.blogspot.co.uk/2005/02/muslim-rape-epidemic-in-sweden-and.html
I’ll have to look into it some more but for now, this is the kind of things I’m thinking.
Newsbot9
Families are being split up by coalition policies and “benefit caps”. And you have to pay, under workfare, for your transport and food out the meagre cash paid to you. Moreover, you will spend – and studies show this repeatedly – considerably longer unemployed AND it’s displacing jobs.
Your “insular” painting of the Nordic nations is nonsense. They enable individualism by removing the need for economic interdependence, people are confident about changing jobs and demanding reasonable wages.
Of course you’d refuse to take part in a society like that! And of course you call trade and basic worker rights “crap”, the EU’s done so much more to safeguard rights than Westminster over the last few decades.
For YOU, a closed border and a subsistence economy might be fine. And of course you’re all for totalitarian “social change” based off punishment for any kind of social difference.
And of course you think that only a purge of everything other than your ideology is required. Gotta march them into the sea if they don’t act subservient.