There’s one big problem with the branding of George Osborne as “The Austerity Chancellor”. That is, as a direct result of his own policies, he has made the economy much worse. Borrowing is going up, we’ve lost the “triple A” rating which Osborne himself was very proud of, consumer demand is effectively dead, and job security appears to be at its worst. It is of course vaguely possible that George Osborne is ‘sensitive’ about his own failings, and, to onlookers, he did look genuinely surprised at his level of unpopularity at an occasion which should have caused him immense pride.
And yet the popularity of his unpopularity cannot be underestimated. The YouTube video above has had 929,641 views. It seems that people have clicked on this video with the same relish that some people on a motorway slow down to observe a pile-up on the opposite carriageway. It is in a way easy to identify why George Osborne is unpopular; he gave a perception of enormous arrogance, and yet drove the UK economy into retropulsion with remarkable efficiency. Due to his policy, his target of ‘paying off the deficit’ by 2015 is pure science-fiction. People are undoubtedly sick of the ‘it’s all Labour’s fault’, and yet Labour members are still very enthusiastic about blaming the current UK’s troubles on Margaret Thatcher. It could be that George Osborne, with his Bullingdon past, has activated the ‘politics of envy’ button, and so there is a perception that he and Iain Duncan-Smith are “punishing” the most vulnerable members of society such as disabled citizens, while pursuing policies which are ‘friendly’ to the members of society with higher incomes.
In politics, leopards can change their spots all too easily. My gut feeling is that there will be another hung parliament in 2015. Sure, Ed Miliband managed to shoot ‘on target’ at an open goal today, and quite miraculously for some managed to avoid the crossbar. And thankfully the Liberal Democrats have blocked David Cameron’s “boundary changes” plan. All Ed Miliband has to do is to avoid losing, and there is absolutely nothing in it for him to play dangerously. In a similar vein, after the shambles that was last year’s Budget, George Osborne doesn’t need to pull any rabbits out of his hat. Last year, he was bigging up a great ‘reforming budget’ which rapidly disintegrated into a slanging match over pasties, and whether a railway Cornish pasty stall in a railway station had in fact shut down. Osborne will obviously be keen to avoid a repeat performance of last year’s catastrophe.
Not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters. Commentators have often discussed openly what the Achilles’ heel of this Coalition might be. It is not disunity – there is no narrative of people violently throwing wobblies or mobile phones, or a similar episode of political fratricide. It could be that this Coalition is simply ‘out of touch’, and this is to some extent supported by evidence such as the “Millionaire’s tax benefit” or the “Bedroom tax”. However, the label of sheer incompetence is still a crucial one. Despite the screw-up that is the UK economy under the Coalition’s watch, certain voters are not blaming the Liberal Democrats. Despite the never-ending list of things that have gone wrong, such as the recent section 75 NHS regulations, there always seems scope for things to get even worse. Michael Gove does not want any further shambles over his school qualifications, while Theresa May’s star appears to be ‘in the ascendant’ with a perennial blistering attack on human rights. However, both parties do not wish to scupper their chances of a leadership bid if David Cameron fails in June 2015, and certainly are mindful of the old adage that “He who wields the knife never wears the crown”, with numerous former casualties such as David Miliband and Michael Heseltine.
Nick Clegg may suddenly have got ‘second wind’ having won Eastleigh, but this victory was only because Labour would have needed a miracle to win it (with Eastleigh around 250th on his “hit list”), and Maria Hutchings amazingly came third in a two-horse race. His party’s slogan “strong economy and a fair society” is obscenely fradulent at so many levels, even if you generously park his blatant lie about Labour having been incompetent over the economy. He himself had conceded the need for a £1 TN bailout of the banks as an emergency measure in the global financial crisis, and this is clearly stated in Hansard. The economy which was in recovery when he took over in May 2010 is now virtually dead, and heading for a “triple dip”. And if his “fair society” is epitomised by bedroom taxes victimising narrow sections of society, library closures, withdrawal of education support allowance, privatisation of the NHS which had been universal and free-at-the-point-of-use, high street closures of law centres denying thousands of ‘access-to-justice’, reports of suicides following welfare claims, Nick Clegg and his party genuinely need help. However, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are mindful that they have reached a “critical mass” of cock-ups, and the Liberal Democrats, lacking all insight and being in complete denial, still feel that they have a useful rôle to play in propping up any minority government. However, next time Labour intend to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, so it would be a joke for the Liberal Democrats to ‘support’ this if they found themselves in government again, but Labour might need their votes. The only way to avoid this scenario is for Ed Miliband after his lengthy policy review to convince voters that there are genuine reasons why he should be allowed to implement his ‘One Nation’ vision. However, all political parties are prepared to ditch symbols of their values. It could be that Labour has no problem with revisiting the issue of electoral reform, again, if the Liberal Democrats demanded it; Clegg couldn’t care less if this were to become yet another ‘once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity’.
The label of this Coalition is well deserved, in fairness. David Cameron knows himself that he is living on borrowed time, but it is the whole Cabinet which is incompetent. For all his perceived faults, Ed Balls is a committed Keynesian, and has called it right on the economy; the only reason David Cameron perseverates in his hate campaign of him is that he knows he is a threat. In fact, all of the opposition are, because the Coalition has somehow managed to alienate systematically disabled citizens, the chronically sick, lawyers, physicians, human rights activists, and so on, in fact anyone apart from big corporates. The fact that he has managed to piss off most of the country ultimately will be his downfall.
