With exactly one year to go until the next General Election, political parties are sharpening their messaging and, not surprisingly the focus is clearly on the economy.
Which harks back to the Clinton 1992 campaign slogan: It’s the economy, stupid.
Conservatives: Long-term Economic Plan (Stupid)
The message: From the PM down, you can’t talk to a conservative politician or campaigner without hearing the phrase “Long-term economic plan”. For the Conservatives, the “Plan” is to continue to deliver economic growth and private sector jobs while continuing the hard work of “dealing with the deficit”. The pitch is simple: only the Tories have a long-term plan to help the UK pay its own way in the world. Between now and election day, every bit of good (and not so good) news will be met with some variation on the theme of the “long-term economic plan” is working. Which leads to the other economic/political message: “Don’t Labour ruin it”
The risks: The housing bubble. Its on the front of every newspaper and top of the ‘to-do’ list for the Bank of England. Burst the bubble and you risk hurting the squeezed middle. Which is the second risk. If the economy is growing, but people don’t feel better off, then, well, the Conservatives could suffer. That’s the position Bush Sr was in during the ’92 Presidential campaign against Clinton.
