These opini0n polls were issued by Ipsos Mori yesterday embargoed until this morning and were sent to me by email. What they suggest is that people are still very worried about the impact of Covid:
What is more, they suggest that people are worried about the capacity of the NHS to treat them:
I see nothing in this to suggest that peoples concerns have been allayed, and as a consequence I see nothing that will encourage people to go out and spend. The obvious conclusion to reach is that a booming recovery is off anyone's agenda right now.
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You have been clear from the first BOE/ Treasury/ financial press propaganda about the Covid cash mountain driving a boom that it was nonsense. It is worth reflecting how uniform and intense this propaganda was and how it reflected Johnson’s cheer leader approach to politics. There was never a trace of analysis, only assumptions that the owners of this bounty were just biding their time for a longed for opportunity to splash out. However aware one is of the insidious, all pervading hand of neoliberalism , such a monumental lack of judgement from the entire financial elite is akin to discovering that the captain of the ship is a seventeen year old apprentice, just as the rudder falls off in a storm.
I can vouch for that.
People are not stupid when it comes to money.
They can be be stupid and easily misled however when it comes to the causes of the problem of a lack of money (immigration, Europe etc.,) but not money itself.
I think that austerity has dragged on for too long – there is only so much people will take.
Larry Elliott was talking in the Guardian the other day about how naked the Tories will be when or if – (yes Larry – ‘if’!!) Covid subsides and the mixture of BREXIT and austerity are left to their own devices.
Who’d be a Tory eh? I mean they’re so stupid. They’re nothing to be proud of are they?
@ Pilgrim Slight Return
Tories may indeed, actually are, stupid, as John Stuart Mill, but they’re damnably clever at two things – winning power, and holding on to it!
They’re like a societal equivalent of dry, or wet, rot that can creep through walls, take over a building, and leave you with no option but to demolish the building – not a happy prospect.
So let’s hope they’re a treatable plague, such as Japanese knotweed, to get rid of which you have to dig down and excavate all affected soil, and replace it.
Such an exercise is required to deal with the rot in our body politic, but the problem is what form would the equivalent of a deep excavation and soil replacement take.
Education is clearly key, but that must be released from the control of the Gradgrinds, who have reduced education to “training and formation” in the firm of hoops to jump through.
Equally, the quality of our elected representatives must be improved, possibly by a requirement to have a qualification in the real operation of Government finance and money creation (with perhaps an oral exam for those not good at formal education, but possessed of the native wit and intelligence to be good MP’s or Councillors – I wouldn’t want a system that winnowed out such quality grain!)
This is all “off the top of my head” stuff, which would require much deeper investigation and consideration. But as Richard has noted elsewhere, the calibre of Tory MP’s is woeful, and I’d say the same is true of Opposition MP’s.
Something has to be done, and bringing in PR is a first essential, as machine politicians and parachuted in candidates are not so easily shoe-horned in, when the concept of a safe seat is made harder by the introduction of PR.
Andrew
I entirely agree – but the issue about FPTP perverts all the political parties it seems and therefore undermines what we really need in terms of collaborative politics allied to checks on executive power when we get people like Blair, May and Johnson in power.
Currently our election system is just a booster unit to launch some very unsavoury and flawed people into orbit.
The future has to be shared/diversified executive power. But when?
In an era of unabashed quantative easing and MMT a booming recovery can be created out of thin air.
All that is required is political will and a plausible story.
Dont underestimate the will of the tories to stay in power and the ability of the media to spin a story.
(You’re probably right but (?)) an opinion poll isn’t economic data. What people on the whole say, and what they do, aren’t always consistent.