FactCheck: Do we only vote Labour when times are good?
The claim
“In good times people turn to left-wing parties but in bad times they say ‘Left-wing parties can’t necessarily make those tough decisions, we’ll turn to the right.”
Ed Miliband, BBC Radio 4 Today programme, 10 January 2012
The background
Trying to define what he’ll bring to the party as Leader in opposition, Ed Miliband said today he would “demonstrate once and for all that Labour is a party for all times, not only a party for good times”.
The next time Labour comes to power will be different, he said, because it “will be handed a deficit”.
This isn’t something that usually happens, he argued. Labour only gets into power during the good times.
But is it true that voters only side with the Left when things are looking up? FactCheck looks at the evidence.
The analysis
For the sake of argument, FactCheck has looked at UK economic growth or gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of the “good times”. The Office for National Statistics only began recording GDP in 1948, therefore annual growth rates are only available from 1949.
The verdict
The graph shows that Labour has indeed never been voted in when the economy has been in trouble – in fact it has never swept into Number 10 with economic growth running below 2 per cent.
But it also shows that they are not always voted into power when the economy is buoyant either.
The Tories oversaw three peaks in economic growth between 1951 and 1964 without Labour getting in, another one in the 70s and two more in the 80′s.
Perhaps that’s why Mr Miliband narrowed his claim, later today,to cover just New Labour’s tenure. “Each time New Labour won an election, it won at a time when business was prospering. Next time we come back to power, it will be different,” he said.
Labour was booted out because times were bad, he said, but he continues to reject the charge that it was the last Labour government’s overspending the caused the deficit.
Mr Miliband has long blamed the financial crisis for the deficit. Yet as FactCheck has proved before, this was only part of the problem.
The fact is, while Labour cut some of its debts, it could have done much more. If it had, we would have been better prepared for the economic maelstrom. That said, the drop in tax receipts triggered by the economic crisis is what’s behind the bulk of the £149bn deficit (read our previous FactCheck for more).
The Labour leader said today: “We’ve got to show we can deliver fairness in these tough times.” Looking at the historical data however, Labour may have to prove to voters that it can deliver fairness in the good times too.
By Emma Thelwell
There are 6 comments on this post
I’m sorry Emma, but the fact that there was some additional spending before the crisis in no way made the crisis worse, in fact it probably helped to reduce job losses by acting as a mild stimulus.
You’re previous analyses do not reflect the fact that despite the rhetoric of supply-side economists you quote, Keynsians and Post-Keynsian economists would not have endorsed this view that structural deficits reduce growth and jobs.
In fact post-keynsians show conclusive evidence that the way structural deficits are estimated is totally flawed, being based on theories that can either not be proven, or have direct evidence contradicting them. On top of the that, the mathematical margin of error is truly enormous anyway.
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Emma,
Further to my point above, here is a link to Prof W Mitchell’s blog which goes into detail about how the structural balance is estimated (wrongly):
“And to make matters worse, they now estimate the structural balance by basing it on the NAIRU or some derivation of it – which is, in turn, estimated using very spurious models. This allows them to compute the tax and spending that would occur at this so-called full employment point. But it severely underestimates the tax revenue and overestimates the spending and thus concludes the structural balance is more in deficit (less in surplus) than it actually is.
They thus systematically understate the degree of discretionary contraction coming from fiscal policy.”
Structural Deficits – the great con job!
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=2326
Kind Regards
Charlie
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Our economy was in terrible trouble in 1945 with both our deficit and accumulated debts at highs well above our current levels. Moreover, our major industries and housing had been devastated by years of bomb damage and lack of repair and replacement.
In that same year (1945) there was an overwhelming vote for the radical Labour Government led by the shy Clement Atlee.
In 1964, the Tory government led by Lord Home ruled a country riven by scandal and economic failure on a grand scale. Yet that incompetence was only very narrowly defeated by the charismatic Harold Wilson’s Labour Party.
Conclusion: nobody knows what will defeat an incumbent of any complexion.
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