The UK is changing rapidly, and irreversibly, and this election is not answering the questions that poses

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Martin Wolf summarises his feelings about the election campaign rather well this morning in the FT:

The time has surely come to shift the focus from the obsession with fiscal deficits and debt. These were neither the cause of the crisis nor the solution. Whatever one thinks of the fiscal policies of the coalition, a weak and unbalanced recovery from a huge recession is not a vindication. The UK faces really big economic challenges. It confronts equally huge questions about its place in the world and in Europe, as well as its own constitutional future. Neither main party offers convincing responses to these challenges. Have no illusion: real competence is not on offer, either in economics or, in truth, much else.

On the issue of economics he is right.

What he does not say that this is the result of the shared neoliberal obsession of the UK's two main parties (and LibDems, plus UKIP).

But he is also right that the election has missed so many big issues whilst tackling this non-issue. Why a non-issue? Because as he notes:

[T]he view that the UK's crisis was essentially due to Labour profligacy is false. This mistaken belief allows people to ignore the weaknesses of the private economy, which was more fragile than thought in those pre-crisis years.

And, as for the 'recovery':

Yet the more fundamental point is that this has been a disturbingly weak and unbalanced recovery, not a strong, healthy one.

So we move on to the post election period knowing that the wrong questions will remain at the top of the agenda with a deep sigh of 'if only' and the knowledge that campaigning for real reform remains an imperative.

That's the only way we will get a sound economy that addresses the real issues of sustainable growth and a fair distribution of reward. And the only way that the big issue of what country we are will be answered. And the only way that how we decide on that issue will be addressed.

And maybe, just maybe, we might also address how the economics of the society we are heading for, whatever politics argues about, might be properly addressed because right now I think no one is addressing how the semi-federal, coalition ruled, country we might become, that may well embrace a currency union with an independent Scotland, is going to settle the massive issues of monetary, fiscal and taxation policy that remain at the heart of politics and yet about which it seems almost no politician wants to ask or answer appropriate questions.

I may be in business for a bit longer, in other words.


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