Hard times are getting harder under a government that has fallen out of favour – but the public is still smiling on the man at the helm
Hard times are getting harder under a government that has fallen out of favour – but the public is still smiling on the man at the helm. That is the message of today's Guardian/ICM poll – a message that will bring the prime minister some seasonal cheer, and one that will spur anxious head-scratching on the part of a Labour party which appears to be stuck in a slump.
Consider only what the Marxists used to call the material base of politics, and the fact that there is any Conservative lead at all, even if only of one point, is utterly bizarre. Britons say they are spending less this Christmas, and fully expect the hardship, misery and division to intensify in the new year, without any hope of turning the corner even by the time 2012 is done. Recall that at the start of 2011 there had been a sense that restored prosperity was just about visible on the distant horizon: employment was picking up and all the speculation concerned when the Bank of England would have to jack up rates. Twelve months on, joblessness is at a 17-year high, and those who are in work are struggling with static wages and surging living costs inflated by VAT. Meanwhile growth is so weak that the borrowing targets have bitten the dust, raising the disastrous prospect that the cuts could be self-defeating. In these circumstances historical materialism might predict the country rounding on the man who claimed that his plan had taken Britain out of the danger zone. Instead, however, David Cameron is coming out on top.
But then electoral dynamics has never been the Marxists' strongest suit. History is littered with cases where voters have responded to economic ravages by sheltering behind figures of the right, from Baldwin to Thatcher. It is also true that opposition is inherently difficult after the sort of long spell in office which New Labour had. You cannot sound credible moaning about a present that is in many ways your party's own creation. All the more so amid a slump which can be traced to negligent regulation on your own side's watch. Those elements on the right of the party who have always refused to reconcile themselves to the younger Miliband's leadership are either deluded or disingenuous when they claim that a few more apologies and an embrace of cutting would provide an easy political answer, let alone an economic one. But even while accepting that Ed Miliband has a formidably difficult job, it is impossible to look at this poll and conclude that he is doing it well enough. He has a cool head which he will need to hold on to as he grapples with the reality that he is not currently seen as equal to this grave hour. With Labour's widening trust deficit on the economy – about the only real issue just now – it is less the coalition than the red team that is headed for midterm blues.
New year resolutions are clearly in order, but what exactly should they be? After all, no one could accuse the hyper-energetic shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, of being lazy – the problem is rather that his five-point growth plans and rapid rebuttals come too thick and fast for the public to pick out a simple argument from the din. The challenge for Mr Miliband is somehow to connect his own worthy but airy talk about a more socially productive economy with Mr Balls' stream of micro-measures. A comprehensive programme for government is not yet required – but Labour does need to come up with a couple of meaty proposals to convey the direction of travel. A full-blooded national infrastructure bank, for instance, could make the point about selectively investing in order to grow and in turn repay the debt. A new companies act, meanwhile, could demonstrate how the predatory practices that Mr Miliband condemns are actually going to be tackled. History has demonstrated that there can be no assumption that the left will win in a slump but, from the Popular Front to the New Deal, it has come out on top when it has given frightened voters a glimpse of how different things could be.