British Politics

By Stephen MacAvoy

The forthcoming election is being fought with all three main parties committed to unprecedented cuts in public spending. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has recently described, the Conservatives’ plans for public spending from this year onwards would make it the “tightest five-year period since (at least) World War Two” whilst Liberal Democrat and Labour plans would see the “tightest four-year period since April 1976”. The Financial Times has outlined various scenarios of what this will mean for the population here.
 
This consensus on cutting spending needs to be opposed by the widest possible coalition. Not only will these cuts unleash serious attacks on living standards of the population but they will undermine the restoring of economic growth, as the TUC has recently noted. Given that the recession has been driven by a collapse in investment and the government budget deficit is overwhelmingly a product of the falling tax receipts caused by the recession, the priority should be to increase investment.

By Stephen MacAvoy

Following the Liberal Democrats’ rise in the polls, the Blairites have launched an offensive to secure their long held goal of a Lib-Lab coalition. The BBC’s Nick Robinson has reported that senior Labour figures see the prospect of a Lib-Lab post election deal as the “the ultimate fulfilment of the New Labour mission.”

It is now less than two weeks till election day and postal voting is commencing, so one would expect Labour’s campaign to be focussed on maximising its vote. But this is not happening. Instead in the official campaign, run by Peter Mandelson, the formation of a coalition is being promoted. Mandelson’s memo to Labour Party members on 18 April, in which he said he was “not against coalition government in principle”, was flagged up by The Independent as “the first time a senior Labour figure has spoken about a Lib-Lab coalition” in this election. To help secure this outcome the Lib Dems are being defended, with Mandelson criticising media attacks on them. Simultaneously, Labour and its Leader’s prospects have been deliberately run down, with the FT titling an article “Mandelson admits voters tired of Labour”.

By Stephen MacAvoy

The narrowing of the Tory lead in the opinion polls over recent months underlines that the outcome of the next election is not certain. The political implications are clear: a shift by Labour to policies that motivate the overwhelming majority of the population threatened by the Tories’ planned harsh economic policies could prevent a Conservative government.

Despite the backdrop of a deep economic downturn and strong backing from most of the press amongst other factors, the Conservatives are still only polling on average at around 40 per cent (see UK Polling Report 28 December).