PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, takes a look at the economic speeches made this week by Rachel Reeves, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch.
It’s the economy, stupid”. This famous phrase is credited to James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign manager in the 1992 Presidential election.
It’s been used to imply that in most elections, the party with the best plan to improve living conditions and stimulate economic growth would prevail.
Last week, major speeches by Rachel Reeves, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch might seem to suggest that the economy is now the key, dominating issue in British politics.
Reeves’ speech was the most bizarre. The strategy seemed to be to “roll the pitch” ahead of the budget on 26th November to prepare people for a breach of Labour’s manifesto pledges and a measurable hike in taxes. However, she didn’t seem to roll the pitch at all – she just stood there and pointed at the pitch. I can’t see any way in which her public intervention will render the budget any more palatable.
Nigel Farage has pivoted Reform’s approach away from offering big tax cuts to a firmer approach to fiscal discipline. At last year’s election he promised sweeping tax reductions – most notably a rise in the income tax threshold to £20,000 per annum. However, he now says big tax cuts will have to wait until the public finances are restored to order.
This left Kemi Badenoch to point out that the Conservatives are now alone in promising a measurably lower tax burden. They will split the savings they can find into reducing the deficit and lowering tax.
Meanwhile, a resurgent Green Party has shifted its focus away from “save the planet” and towards “soak the rich” as its main proposition.
I’m not sure what the Liberal Democrats are up to, but I’d imagine that Ed Davey is parachuting off a waterslide somewhere in some sort of contorted analogy about some economic policy or other.
This might lead you to believe that we are back to the major political fight being an economic one.
Maybe.
There’s no doubt that the overall state of the economy and how it manifests in the prices people face and the wage packets they receive will, of course, always be a major determining factor in voting behaviour.
However, I think it is the case that something deeper is going on in electoral politics – and the dire state of the British economy is as much a symptom of a wider issue rather than simply being a cause of people switching their votes.
Britain seems broken in virtually every aspect. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at our apparent inability to keep convicts in prison, for example. This is such a basic and rudimentary function of the state that it beggars belief that it can’t be executed without error.
Our ability to stem the flow of the small boats seems almost wholly reliant on weather rather than policy. The effort required to deport someone appears Herculean rather than routine.
The NHS continues to be in a permanent state of crisis, with latest reports indicating it has spent £1.4bn on carbon net zero targets without in any way reducing its carbon footprint.
It seems impossible to find any sector of our economy or society that you can point to and declare, “Well, at least things are going swimmingly over here.”
I think voters’ disappointment and anger about our high tax, wasteful spend, heavily regulated economy is part of a wider malaise. The public can see and feel that the country is falling apart.
Although James Carville’s famous phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid”, is often deployed to try and get your own side to focus relentlessly on economic policy, it was actually only the second item on the sheet that he hung up in his campaign office.
The first point read, “Change v more of the same”. This, of course, is a perennial rallying cry for opposition parties. But the real question is whether, if the electorate are looking for change at all, they want a change of system or merely a change of personnel.
I think they are looking for a system change and are now willing to accept the risks and uncertainties that go along with it. Whoever is offering the most plausible package for changing the whole system is likely to prevail when we do finally go to the polls again.
Keep the flag of freedom flying!