Labour predicted to win Stafford in May 2015 General Election by .03% Majority

The Hawk said:

I have freed myself from the shackles of the traditional three party establishment and it feels great.”

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Withnail said:

How did you vote in the AV referendum?

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The Hawk said:

Despite the proposed system not been the best method of PR, I did vote for the AV system as put forward in the referendum.

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John Marwood said:

Nobody at all has suggested a ConLab coalition

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Gramaisc said:

The possible effects of AV - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32341420 ....

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If AV had gone through, we would now be looking at the clear possibility of an outright Tory victory.

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Ecker said:

If you believe a tory, you will believe anything.

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John Marwood said:

pt 2

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This is all straightforward economics of the kind taught to every economics undergraduate around the world. The government chose a policy that many economists said in advance would do considerable harm. When that harm materialised it had to change its policy. That should have meant the government suffered a large blow to its reputation. The delayed recovery is one reason why living standards have suffered, so this is hardly an academic issue. A government with this woeful record should not be campaigning on economic competence. So, how has it managed to turn complete failure into the appearance of success?

There are four critical steps in how this was achieved. The first was to equate government budgets with household budgets. A consequence of recession is that many individuals and firms have to tighten their belts, so it seems intuitive that governments should do the same. This will be painful but individuals know that putting off their own adjustment can make things worse. It is part of every economics student’s initial education to learn why this analogy between individuals and governments is wrong – but most people have not studied economics.

A second key step was to blame the deficit on Labour profligacy. You do not need an economist to tell you that the main reason for the increase in the deficit was the recession created by the financial crisis. It is the case that the later years of the Brown chancellorship were not as fiscally prudent as his earlier years. But just before the recession the government debt-to-GDP ratio was lower than in 1997, which hardly indicates profligacy. Some have tried to suggest in hindsight that 2007 was a massive boom year (implying the need to run a budget surplus) but most evidence suggests otherwise and that certainly was not what most people thought at the time. There is enough here to make the profligacy charge vaguely credible, however, to people who do not look at the numbers.

The third stage in the austerity deception was to pretend that the policy change in 2012 was not a change in policy. The truth is plain to see in the data, but it was vital for Osborne not to admit that he was easing up on austerity. If he had admitted to changing his policy, he would have had to say why: austerity was delaying the recovery. All this stuff about a “long-term economic plan” can be seen as part of the effort to cover up the reversal and, therefore, the austerity mistake.

Pretending there had been no change in policy also allowed the fourth and final stage of turning failure into success, which was the most audacious deception of all. This was to claim that the recovery in 2013 vindicated the austerity policy. To see how absurd this claim is, imagine that a government on a whim decided to close down half the economy for a year. That would be a crazy thing to do, and with only half as much produced, everyone would be much poorer. However, a year later when that half of the economy started up again, economic growth would be around 100 per cent. The government could claim that this miraculous recovery vindicated its decision to close half the economy down the previous year. That would be absurd, but it is a pretty good analogy to claiming that the recovery of 2013 vindicated the austerity of 2010.

This was how the government could turn economic failure into apparent political success. The strategy also had one further consequence. It redefined the meaning of what good macroeconomic policy was. If you asked any economist what the aim of government policy should be, he or she would probably say it was to increase the welfare of the public, or, more specifically, to raise standards of living. A government that had presided over the longest fall in real wages in modern UK history would be in deep trouble. However, for much of the media, the goal of macroeconomic policy has been redefined as how effective the government has been at reducing the deficit. Macroeconomics as portrayed by the media is so different from the macroeconomics of the textbooks that I call it “mediamacro”.

Nothing illustrates mediamacro better than Ed Miliband’s 2014 Labour conference speech, in which he forgot to mention the deficit. In terms of what influences national prosperity, the real news over the past five years has been the stagnation in UK productivity. Yet when David Cameron failed to mention the productivity slowdown in his conference speech, hardly any journalist bothered to highlight this huge omission. When Miliband forgot to mention the deficit even Jon Snow lambasted him.

How did the coalition government manage to transform the media debate on macroeconomic policy so comprehensively? I have some idea of the ingredients involved but much less idea of how important each is. Of course having a partisan press is important, if only because it is capable of setting agendas. It also helps that the BBC can be easily intimidated. When its former economics editor Stephanie Flanders dared suggest that a lack of productivity growth might be a problem, Iain Duncan Smith made a formal complaint.

There is a further problem with how the media generally get their economic expertise. The economists you are most likely to see in the media are those who work in the City. It is, after all, part of their job to get media exposure; they’re always on hand to give a reaction. To be fair, when it comes to the daily ups and downs of the market, they are also best qualified to play this role, though in fact no one knows why markets move from day to day. But on issues of macroeconomic policy, City economists can present a biased and distorted view.

At the beginning of 2014, the Financial Times conducted a survey of economists; one of the questions it asked was: “Has George Osborne’s ‘plan A’ been vindicated by the recovery?” As I have already suggested, this question has an obvious answer. The 2013 recovery could not possibly vindicate the 2010 austerity because it is exactly what you would have expected to happen after austerity initially reduced GDP growth and was eased as a result. Among the academics answering this question, there were ten clear nos and only two clear yeses. However, among the many City economists who answered the FT survey, the numbers of yes and no replies were more evenly balanced.

Granted, it is regrettable that academic economists cannot speak with complete unanimity on the matter, but a 2/10 split is as close to a consensus as these things go. It is also the case that almost all academic macroeconomists would argue that the cuts in public investment that occurred in 2010 were a grave mistake. As the New Statesman reported in 2012, many of the minority of economists who originally supported immediate austerity have since acknowledged that cutting public investment in 2010 and 2011 was a grave mistake. It was these cuts, such as halting repairs to schools or reducing spending on flood defences, which most damaged GDP.

The austerity mistake involves basic macroeconomics. Cutting spending will reduce demand and is not to be undertaken when interest rates cannot be cut to offset its impact. The Conservatives, if elected, plan further sharp austerity in the early years of the next parliament, at a time when interest rates are still expected to be at or near their floor. Whatever your views about the desirable size of the state in the long run, to cut spending when the economy is still vulnerable in this way is to take a huge risk. It is exactly the risk that materialised from 2010, except today there is not even a hint of market pressure to cut the deficit quickly. Being able to cover up the earlier mistake is bad enough. Planning to repeat it is pure folly.

Simon Wren-Lewis is a professor of economics at Oxford University

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The Hawk said:

I have already voted, as I have a postal vote.

I have freed myself from the shackles of the traditional three party establishment and it feels great.

I wanted to send a message to the establishment that I have had enough of them. If, on 7 May, enough people vote for the smaller parties, then maybe, just maybe, we can start our own UK Spring revolution, one that really will change the face of British politics.

So my message to the establishment is this:

“I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.”

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captainpish said:

T

That makes lovely reading, can you now find some more waffle about how labour destroyed the UK economy and much more in their terms prior to the tory victory?

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Withnail said:

Well that's kind of the point.

If you look up ^there, heaven help us all, you'll see that Ukip are currently splitting a right-wing vote and allowing a Labour candidate to win in the process.

Admittedly Labour is ahead +ing the Con/UKIP vote together - but remember only in this particular poll,and as has been previously mentioned this is probably not representative of the Stafford electorate as a whole.

If we assume that Stafford voters are, on the whole, right-leaning, as seems depressingly likely - under AV the UKIP voters would give their second preference as Con, and vice versa..

t is probable that the seat would be held by Lefroy in such circumstances, which would probably be a more acceptable outcome to those very same Ukip voters who would rather see a blue shade of purple than a red one.

Which is kind of the point - at least the electorate would end up with their least worst option.

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andy w said:

Whilst AV would give the winning candidate a more valid mandate than as present I struggle to see how the system would give representation for smaller parties. A electoral system that includes PR would be needed see truer representation at Westminster.
I am torn between a parliament based on Proportional Representation or the existing system where a constituency directly elects a MP to represent them at Westminster who is accountable to his/her constituents. The Scottish Parliament has a mixture of both, if this is a good thing or not I do not know or what the remit of the top up MSPs is.

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John Marwood said:

Trouble is

People are stupid

And they will still vote whatever the system

So we get stupid Governments

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