A 0.1 per cent increase in "wages" that include bonuses.
Hang out the bunting, Mabel.
At this stage in the 1992 Parliament, all manner of economic "good news" was being pumped out.
No one believed a word of it, and it was all universally assumed to be outright lies, because it bore no resemblance to anyone's lived experience.
In any case, the electorate had made up its mind during the autumn after the previous General Election, four and a half years before the next one. Absolutely nothing could have changed the inevitable result.
Elections next month, then. We shall see how good anyone is feeling towards the Coalition parties.
At the point at which there ought to have been a General Election.
So that after which, psychologically and culturally, the public mood will not alter until there has been a General Election.
So that after which, psychologically and culturally, the public mood will not alter until there has been a General Election.
I think that we all know what the result is going to be.
You meant to say Labour won the General Election in 1997 by promising to match Tory economic policies to the letter.
ReplyDeleteBecause those policies had evidently been so successful that Labour knew it had to promise to match them.
"We won't raise income tax" and "we will match Major's spending for the first two years of Parliament" was the Labour pitch in 1997.
Then, as now, we had a strong economy and they knew it.
You are obviously too young to remember.
ReplyDeleteLabour's poll lead had not varied since nearly two years before John Smith had died. There was no New Labour then.
And no one, absolutely no one in the real world, had the slightest sense of a "strong economy" in early 1997. Routine Government claims to that effect were treated with derision by the electorate at large.
I remember that. Everybody was still talking about the recession until the day Tories lost, like that was the definition of a recession, having a Tory government. The same as today, maybe now the same for ever. People believe there is a recession as long as there is a Tory government and not one day longer. They could even be right.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
ReplyDeleteBut they cannot see it. They remain convinced that the clique of cranks brought in by Thatcher instead of proper economists are the real deal, perhaps because those cranks have so successfully colonised academic Economics on the back of her patronage, although that tide is at last turning now that she is dead.
Meanwhile, whereas Labour has given up on the clique of cranks whom Blair brought in instead of proper foreign policy specialists, those cranks have found a happy home on the other side, where the lack of other powerbases such as the unions will make them a very great deal more difficult to shift.
But that is another story. Or, at any rate, it is a different thread.
I'm sure all those Tory and Lib Dem MEPs who lose their seats next month will be delighted at that expression of public confidence in the handling of the economy by George Osborne and Danny Alexander.
ReplyDeleteI know, isn't the view from the bunker always the most hilarious thing?
ReplyDeleteLike the Labour losses at the 2007 local elections, which the Blairite remnant tried to attribute to public distress that Tony Blair was leaving.
In the public mind, "Tory Government" now equals "recession". If the Prime Minister is a Conservative, then the voters assume there to be a recession even when there isn't, and remember there as having been a recession even when there wasn't.
Thus, to this day and forever, they believe that there was a recession on the day of the 1997 Election, that it had been going on continuously for four and half years by then, and that it ended the moment that there came to be a Labour Government instead.
Regardless of the economic circumstances this time next year, the entire country will always remember that time in exactly the same way.
That is just how these things now work. There is nothing that the Conservative Party could possibly do to change it.
Any other view is nothing more than the view from the bunker.
Moreover, the voters hate five-year Parliaments.
Four years after a General Election, they feel profoundly that there ought to be another one.
Their minds are made up as to what the result ought to be.
Therefore, the results of next month's elections will be the result of next year's General Election, and nothing whatever in the intervening year could possibly change that.
We all know what that result is going to be.
Any other view is nothing more than the view from the bunker.
Who is Mabel?
ReplyDeleteShe is a ridiculous composite character.
ReplyDelete