The portrait of Britain that emerges from the polling we publish today, bleakly illustrated by individual stories of anxiety, anger and frustration, is of a country going through hard times. For the first time in modern history, the economy is growing strongly but without delivering the customary surge of optimism. For those who live beyond London and the south-east, it still feels like a chimera, another example of the pervasive sense that what politicians say fails to reflect what voters experience. Worse, they don't even understand voters' insecurities. Politicians have, as they say in the US, "no skin in the game".
This is a dangerous moment for politics. When voters feel that politicians do not share their worries about their jobs, their financial security or their children's futures, the politics of democracy itself becomes insecure. It is a problem for politicians across Europe. But in Britain, even after four years out of power, Labour still gets more blame than the coalition. The geographical disjunction, where the further from London voters live, the more disenchanted they are, only adds to the threat to the old way of doing politics. This is not confined to those people who would describe themselves as working class. Many would have been among those successfully wooed by Tony Blair in the run up to 1997, families who were confident and ambitious until the financial crash hit in 2008. The party that can find a way to halt the dynamic of fear that is revealed by our reports is the party that will win the next election. It ought to be Labour.
Continue reading...