My older reader(s) may be familiar with the expression “It’s the economy stupid”. Coined by Bill Clinton advisor Jim Carville before the presidential election of 1992, it meant essentially that with the economy in recession under the first President Bush, the campaign should refer repeatedly to the economy because that’s what mattered most to voters. Politicians from all over the world have adopted the phrase for their campaigns on the basis that it’s true, isn’t it? In practice, I agree, but I feel it is more complicated than that.
The reasons for Donald Trump’s win and Kamala Harris’s defeat may be to do with a number of factors, like did Joe Biden stick around just too long, leaving Harris insufficient time to develop a message of her own? The economy will have been a factor but not, perhaps, in the way we might think.
The post mortems for the Democrats will go on long into the night and deep into the coming years. Because, to all intents and purposes, the economy was doing well under Joe Biden. Inflation, which reached its peak in 2022, is low, wages are higher, there are more jobs and unemployment is lower. Yet Biden’s successor lost and lost badly. How so?
I cannot know the answer to this, but I have a theory, which is that maybe many people did not feel better off than they did four years ago when Biden displaced Trump. If things are better today than they were in 2022, maybe people are still worse off? Prices went up dramatically and while they are not increasing at the same rate, things are permanently more expensive. What looks good on paper may feel the same when you are checking this week’s grocery bill. A feel not-quite-so-bad factor is not the same as a feel good factor. Then a guy comes along, all bullshit and bluster, who says he understands your pain and will get rid of inflation altogether, then isn’t that an easier message to sell? The same guy blames Johnny Foreigner for the country’s ills and explains that migrants are eating people’s cats and dogs. He will end your country’s involvement in wars overseas, which he says have nothing to do with America. They are simple slogans, mere rhetoric, but when life is a struggle to put bread on the table and your future is uncertain, change can seem appealing.
Now you might say that Donald Trump’s version of change is an ugly, unattractive change. Beyond the abolish inflation nonsense, Trump’s populism includes a wide range of divisive areas, such as the right of women to control their own reproductive systems. Change will inevitably mean the slashing of government departments and the likely end of affordable healthcare and you would like to think voters, particularly those in rustbelt areas, thought this all through. But the simple fact is this: American voters did not feel better off after four years of Biden and Harris and that is part of the reason Trump has won. Perception is everything and that is, rightly or wrongly, what makes politics what it is.
In 2007, Britain’s then chancellor Gordon Brown abolished the 10p entry rate of income tax because, as he rightly put it, the rate had not properly addressed levels of poverty. But it was what it looked like that damaged Brown and the Labour government. It appeared he was increasing tax for the lowest paid for whom the 10p rate was intended. He realised the error and corrected it later, but the damage was done. Labour, felt many, despite their excellent record in government, was not for poor people.
Now, in 2024 the new Labour government has done something similar by scrapping the winter fuel payment for most pensioners. Before, it was made to all pensioners but now, because of the economic mess bequeathed the Conservatives, Labour had to act and the new chancellor Rachel Reeves decided to scrap the payment to all but the most poor pensioners. Was she right? Economically, probably, because millions simply don’t need free money from the government, but politically it was a misstep. If Reeves and Labour had consulted with the public and even announced they would do so in their election manifesto, I suspect most people would have gone along with it. But they didn’t consult and the winter fuel payment has gone and, I fear, some pensioners will struggle even this winter. And when the red tops get hold of the stories of misery and even death, the publicity will be grim. Undeserved, perhaps, but this is politics. It is not always about doing the right thing. Pensioners, and there are millions of them, vote and many vote only for themselves and not wider society. If they aren’t dead by the next election, they will remember who got rid of the payments and vote accordingly. Good policy and good politics are not the same thing. “It’s the economy stupid”is not the whole story.
We have some of the same debates as Americans. We have a strong right wing element to our politics, thanks to the Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage and Reform UK Ltd, his private company masquerading as a political party, which has driven the Conservative party further to the hard right. Farage has based his entire career on hatred of foreigners and foreign institutions, like the EU. Reform, and increasingly, the Tory party calls for a lower tax, small state economy, which might sound great until your remember that the state is things like hospitals and schools. America has a relatively small state and no NHS, which means over 600,000 people went bankrupt last year because they couldn’t afford to pay medical bills. It couldn’t happen here, like it does in America, could it? Actually, it already has.
Farage led the campaign out of the EU, which has removed the UK’s soft power and will make us poorer, as it is already doing. From 2010 to now, the UK elected right wing small state governments. Not extreme ones like Trump’s but nonetheless governments hacked away at the state for 14 long years. But there is a critical reason the Tories lost in 2024. Despite the slowly improving economy, people felt they were no better off under the Tories, particularly during the high inflation years like 2022. The change Labour promised was not illusory, as Trump’s will surely be in America, and that is a key reason Keir Starmer won. But if by 2029, people do not feel better off and see improved public services, like the NHS, a simplistic message of change may well usher Labour out of power. That, for the UK, is the first message we should take.
Labour’s fuck up with the winter fuel allowance need not be an issue by 2029. But let us not forget that the then chancellor Rishi Sunak did indeed scrap the pensions triple lock for 2021 and I suspect that a few pensioners didn’t forget when they got to the ballot box. For scrapping it once meant a permanent cut to the value of the state pension.
They say what happens in America usually happens here sometime later. McDonalds, for example, and the modern day nightmare that is trick or treat on Halloween. Farage would dearly love to be our Donald Trump and I could foresee circumstances under which he could be. But it need not happen if our politicians are smart and, I hope, honest.
I genuinely fear for the future of America, which, as Carole Cadwalladr put it, now resembles an oligarchy, similar to how Russia was in the 1990s. Power, including much of the media, is in the hands of the super rich who are not answerable or accountable to anyone. While in 2020, the insurrection in Washington was prevented, it will be harder to prevent next time, with Trump and his billionaire backers holding the levers of power. This insurrection will take place over a longer period of time, but I am sure that it will happen.
Britain is currently that rarity, a country being governed from the centre ground of politics. To remain that way will require the government to take the people with them. No more bollocks about “tough” or “difficult” decisions. Do the right things to make our country better and its people better off.
We’ve been used to living in a country where everything feels broken and nothing works. Our new government has promised to fix that and it will need to demonstrate long before the next election that it has.
I feel that many Americans, including millions who voted for Trump, will regret 5th November 2024. And it could be that what they have done, by re-electing Donald Trump, can never be undone. This is, I suggest, a dark day for the world, but let us not pretend it couldn’t get darker still.
