As a blog I have just posted based on new work by Howard Reed for the TUC shows, the vast majority of people in the UK face being worse off in the next five years as a result of government policy. And that is before the risks we face based on the global economic situation and the consequences of Brexit. People should be worried.
The ONS well being survey, published yesterday, shows they are not. This table is particularly telling:
You can see why people got angry in 2008: they had thought things were particularly good. In fact, perceptions in 2006 and 2007 were better than at any time since. And it turned out there was a nasty shock in store. It was the shock that annoyed people, I suspect.
Then note that people think that things have been improving progressively since 2011. In that one trend is the explanation for the election result in 2015.
What changes electoral prospects? Nothing, I suggest, unless expectations prove to be wrong. Then people blame whoever sold the misplaced hope.
Why then might things go wrong for George Osborne? First because of the massively unfair impact of tax and spending changes over the next five years. I repeat Howard Reed's chart on this:
And if the economy really does have as rough a time as looks to be possible, despite recent stock market recoveries and continuing low oil prices then this will be compounded.
People do not like their expectations being dashed. Their expectations are rising right now. If George Osborne cannot deliver on his promises - which are big and appear to be falling apart at present - then change can happen.
But if against expectation he does what he says he will do - and most especially if he does what he says and the world economy does not slump - then he might well win the 2020 election.
Political economy is not quite as simple as meeting people's expectations, but that has a great deal to do with it.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
These surveys tend to reveal that most people can’t see much beyond the end of their nose. The extremes (tripling of food bank use, bedroom tax misery, 2,300 deaths potentially connected with benefit cuts, zero hours contracts) are still affecting a relative small percentage of the populace. So these ‘extremes’ will barely be reflected in such a survey.
If the Tories can keep the misery to this group then this, combined with high levels of apathy and middle-class Shadenfreude might keep this foul Government in power for longer. The general atmosphere in our culture seems to be; ‘I don’t care until the ball and chain comes swinging through my window.’
The problem is that as long as we have an electoral system that allows a party to govern outright with less than 25% of the electorate supporting them (i.e. 75% of electors completely disagree with them but they still get in power!), it doesn’t matter what the majority of people think at all.
As Andrew Dickie’s post about the difference between US and UK political systems highlighted, we live in an elected dictatorship state that does not represent the people democratically (other than the small minority who vote for the party in power).
So all these opinion polls and statistics barely matter at all, when just a few thousand people in marginal seats can dictate the outcome of a national election of a country of over 60 million people.
It’s all nonsense, the game is rigged, the maths is obvious and people need to get very angry about it and demand a fundamental constitutional change in my opinion!
The spending cuts of the recent past fall disproportionately on the North and people who work without having much property, that is the cuts have been targeted fairly carefully at everybody outside the voter base of the current parliamentary majority, and some notable spending boosts have been targeted at that voter base, also I guess because G Osborne knows that he has to win the internal Conservative party elections to become leader, and the vast majority of Conservative association members are southern rentiers (and usually retired women with property and remortgages).
Westminster council demonstrated how to win UK elections under first-past-the-post:
«the eight wards chosen had been the most marginal in the City Council elections of 1986.»
«In services as disparate as street cleaning, pavement repair and environmental improvements, marginal wards were given priority while safely Labour and safely Conservative parts of the city were neglected.»
«In 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide victory in Westminster, increasing their majority from 4 to 38. They won all but one of the wards targeted by Building Stable Communities policy. Porter stood down as Leader of the Council in 1991, and served as Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991-2.»
I am dubious. I do not think the perception of the state of the economy correlates with the state of the household all that well. As with tax, where the link between what is paid and what one gets has been comprehensively lost, so with the economy. People are relentlessly told it is doing well and have no understanding of what that actually means. So it is likely they will reflect that message when asked this question. The question matters. Ask them if they think they are better off and you might get a very different result.
It is true that the propaganda has a profound effect. But that is on the basis of pie in the sky. I do not think it lasts forever. People have been told for ages that if they economy is doing well they will personally benefit. I suspect they are beginning to realise it ain’t necessarily so.
Interesting point
But I think the perception matters when it comes to voting because the question is framed in this way
I think probably both are right.This and the previous very enlightening posts seem to link with your earlier observations about ‘elites’: how will they view the facts shown here? I do not think they will dispute them in their own minds, even though they have to spout a counter rhetoric in public (as ‘modern compassionate Conservatives’). Yet I imagine their attitude will probably be, What’s the problem? The figures may show the majority of the population is being progressively disadvantaged but the surveys show approval of our management of the economy. So, if the majority of the population, including the not well off, feel comfortable with what we have brought about then both materially and philosophically everything is fine, they think.
I think there has been a shift. We no longer hear about rising tides lifting all boats. Now that pretence can be abandonned and the sense seems to be that, with a fear of economic collapse never far below the surface, the populace is content enough as long as it feels that armageddon is staved off – and they are assumed to believe that so long as they see the rich getting richer – somone must be in control and they are the friends of the government so we had better keep voting for them. In the US even Trump mania fits into that – people back him both because they feel disadvantaged and because they vicariously delight in his ability to feed his own riches. It may not last of course if things get seriously worse or the whole house of cards collapses.
I think you are completely correct as perception I believe won the Tories the last election although scare tactics with the SNP and migration helped.
Miliband was perceived to be a weak leader based on nothing except constant abuse from the Tories and the press.
The same with the economy – I canvassed last year for the Labour Party and I remember an encounter with one elector where I tried to explain that the deficit was caused by Global Banking and not the Laboub Party.
After a bit of discussion we agreed that he had a perception that Labour had tanked the economy he shut the door and probably voted Labour.
I support Southampton Football Club and contribute to a fans forum where we discuss the Saints and political matters too.
Most people who post still think Labour ruined the economy despite me and others arguing otherwise.
I was pleased to see another poster quoting facts from Richard
Thanks
Fiona, you’ve made the point I was trying to make above but expressed it better.
‘doing’ well might mean (subconsciously) ‘I’m not in the sh*t’ so the base line shifts from’am I secure’ to ‘I haven’t yet been turned into a non-person.’
The perception matters, as Richard says, but the psychological aspect is important. In a war zone, if you are not dead and can just about eat you will perceive things as ‘going well’ for you.
perhaps if the question had been: ‘what do you think about the state of our society’ or ‘what do you think about social equity.’ What would the answer be. The ‘state of the economy’ includes the former but people tend , I imagine, to interpret it as ‘is my corner OK.’ So the response will be a lowest common denominator one.
Interesting analysis. Intuitively you know that a ‘recovery’ based government money inflating house prices can’t be solid. Whole point seems to be to convince people they were wealthier than they were.
People do not like their expectations being dashed.
You’re right… but there is a point that comes where anger gives way to passivity and people simply don’t believe that it’s worth fighting for better. Is that what Gideon is aiming for? Beat them hard enough and long enough and they won’t come back for more?
Contrariwise, the First Law of Revolutions: they always happen when things start to improve and people’s rising expectations outrun the ability of authorities to deliver.
I sometimes wonder whether we are living in a culture SO past its sell-by-date that apathy is the result – a sort of generalise ennui – crap job/go home/ crap TV/poor quality interaction with others-what Nietzsche called ‘slow suicide.’
Are we living in a culture that is sick of itself -or am I on a bad day!
I do not think there is apathy at all. People are in many ways realistic, despite how it is portrayed. For so long as there was no alternative, they disengaged. And there really was no alternative offer in the Blair era for labour, at least in England. Not so in Scotland, and where there is a different offer suddenly all that “apathy” (sometimes called “contentment” by the more hubristic neoliberals) disappears.
I think we see the same thing with Corbyn, though it is yet to show in practical terms, and unless and until it does it will be ridiculed in the media.
On another thread here it is reported that polls are now showing that folk are not supporting the narrative so much, and I think that also speaks to the “perception” we are discussing. I honestly don’t think that it is as portrayed, at least not so widely as we are invited to believe.
In Scotland it took two things to overturn the media fairytale: people’s own experience, at odds with what they were told was happening; and a genuine ( or perceived, as the media would have it) alternative. English electorate not so different but were lacking an option. That is not so true now, and we will see if it makes a difference. I believe it will.
Neolibs will not help themselves with their dash for completion of their project before the mood turns: after years of careful strategic planning they have gone off half cocked lately against doctors and the disabled. They hadn’t finished the groundwork and have not with the pensioners, who are obviously next. Given they have honed the technique and used it well to date, it can only be that they see the writing on the wall. Or so I think.
In general, I think that folk are rejecting learned helplessness, in face of a possible different future. Taken longer than I had thought, but it is coming, I believe
I hope you are right
I also hope you are right Fiona-I think my views have been coloured by a year-long campaign against the Bedroom Tax and witnessing quite poor turnouts at demonstrations. This lack of societal cohesion with regard to obvious injustices shocked me to the core and I don’t think I’ve got over it.
Great post Richard. I would add that the Eurobarometer survey is from November 2015, since when, economic growth forecasts have been revised considerably downwards and we have had a lot of stock market jitters and warnings that we are headed back into recession… when the poll is conducted this November I think the results will look very different.
Good point
And thanks for the fine work Howard
Agree, fine work from Howard, and an excellent related blog from you. I think there’s another facet to this issue that also comes into play, though. We might summarise it as “how long is it possible to maintain a fiction (or more accurately and less politely, “lie”)?
Readers of Richard’s blogs will be familiar with the extent to which the data and forecasts on which Osborne has built his “austerity = economic success” narrative can be regarded as overly optimistic, based on dubious assumptions, or just plain unsustainable when analysed in any detail. Nevertheless, Osborne and the Treasury, and the government in general, have stuck to that narrative rigidly, and, backed by the Tory media (which now has to include the BBC, and is rapidly capturing C4 News too), have run a very successful, and for most people, highly convincing PR campaign on the back of that narrative – witness the Eurobarometer survey reported here.
But this week’s budget and its follow through indicate that the fictions that underpin the narrative are beginning to unravel. Indeed, as in all cases of lying, the bigger and more complex the lie becomes the harder it is to maintain. One outcome of this is that people and organisations who were happy to go along with the fiction while it was convincing begin to signal a distancing from it. We saw this with the OBR this week. And we also saw it via the media’s wider reporting of the IFS post budget analysis.
Of course, Osborne’s raid on PIP generated a lot of negative coverage. But leaving this aside, for the first time since 2010 we saw the underlying claims on which the “austerity = economic success” fiction is based start to be exposed. The question now is, therefore, how much longer can that fiction be shored up? And, what will be done to replace it when it becomes evident that its day is done?
My view would be that Osborne (assuming he survives the EU referendum) has the autumn statement and one more budget before the fiction unravelles beyond repair. And I don’t see that being any different for another Chancellor given the Tory party has wholeheartedly nailed their colours to this fiction since 2010.
So the question is, then, what comes next? What new fictional narrative can be constructed to maintain their grip on power, and thus the completion of the neoliberal project to dismantle the state by 2020 to such an extent that the damage done is irreversible. Given the Tory party and those who sit at its ideological core are entirely wedded to disaster capitalism (or the shock doctrine if people prefer that term) then what doomsday scenario will be concocted from a mish-mash of fact, half truths and fabricated material to produce the new narrative?
I assume that if we vote to leave the EU then the intended and unintended outcomes will provide the necessary foder for the new, post 2017 narrative. But if we are still in the EU? Global terrorism? Global warming? Bailing out Scotland? Who knows, but one thing’s for certain: by the autumn they’ll be some brainstorming going on somewhere in dark places of the elite to make sure a new narrative can be seamlessly slipped into place at some point in 2017.
I just wish I could be sure it was gong on elswhere too
One certainty, Ivan, is that with the Conservative and Unionist Party seemingly at war with each other Her Majesty’s Loyal ‘opposition’ will need to be made presentable for the neo liberal paymasters for that project to maintain traction.
Anticipate a summer of civil war in the Labour Party as the various neo liberal cuckoo factions, from the Blair Progress cult through to the Blue Labour nostalgics, are instructed to prepare the opposition to be acceptable to the 1% using every dirty trick and smear in the book against the alternative that has had the temerity to raise it’s head above the parapet.
The opening salvos were fired this week with a concerted attack on Corbyn supporters against a straw man of deselection by MP’s who benefitted from the Blair regime’s parachuting in of loyalists and exclusion of non neo liberal activists from standing.
My view is that as long as credit is cheap, people will still perceive the ability to keep up with others in terms of their spending. This blog has explored and recognised the growth in personal debt in this country numerous times.
It is a false consciousness – agreed – but nevertheless it is real to them. This is why I think Carney is being told not to mess with interest rates by Osbourne.
Credit is enabling many of us to float above reality. Those who vote anyway.
the biggest threat george faces is people realising how much worse off they are