It’s the economy, stupid!

The Politics Blog has taken on something of a US Politics slant, but in its defence it is a process of its contributors following not just their interests, but paralleling what they are doing in the classroom. You may be aware that blogs with a different orientation will be up on the T2u site soon, and hopefully that will help satisfy demand. But in the short term I would draw your attention to an excellent piece by the Indy’s Hamish McRae. Students often ask about whether politics or economics is more important in shaping world events, and that’s a tricky one to answer in absolute terms. At the moment, the economy is certainly driving politics. It is the downturn in the economy that have changed Gordon Brown’s fortunes, and the anger over MPs’ expenses is a manifestation of the inability of government to keep to its ridiculous end to boom and bust promise. The status of the economy also determines the rather puerile debate going on at the minute between the two main parties over projected spending beyond the end of this Parliament. The fact is that no one knows for sure how much money will be in Treasury coffers and politicians are obviously too scared to say as much.

This article spells out the prospect of the economy picking up a steady pace before the next election. It is often said that opposition’s don’t win elections, governments lose them and how events unfold over the next year will determine to a large extent the outcome in 2010. Issue based voting largely dictates patterns of voting behaviour in modern election cycles and the collapse in trust for Labour, and in particular Gordon Brown, means that David Cameron as the next PM is the closest thing to a dead cert in politics. Looking at the article, McRae states that the promising figures published on the economy recently are misleading and at best the economy will pick up in another six months. That would be good news for GB, but growth is likely to be slow and unemployment will still be high. But at least he would be able to argue that he steered Britain out of a major world recession. Alternatively if there is a W shaped recession then Labour face meltdown of the type witnessed at the recent Euro and local polls. These two points are of course predicated on how much credit/blame voters attach to GB since we should not forget that John Major in 1997 fell to a heavy defeat against a backdrop of strong economic growth. The fact was that voters refused to forgive the Tories for the ERM crisis in 1992 and the Tories lost their record as the party voters felt were more economically competent.

Read the article here.