AUTUMN 2008 and everywhere from Kent to Caithness life in Britain is stalked by signs of a fierce economic squeeze. From the retail sector comes news that we have given up on the brief idea of paying decent prices for decent food, and have gone back to buying bargain-basement nosh at the cheapest shops we can find.
On the airwaves, union leaders rage at Gordon Brown for deciding – in another clunking U-turn – not to make a special payment to low-income groups to help cope with soaring energy bills. And on the property market, until a few months ago as apparentl
y unsinkable as some modern financial Titanic, all is gloom. Even in grey old Edinburgh, famous for the relative stability of its property values, prices have fallen by more than 6 per cent in a year.
Small wonder, in other words, that cultural and political commentators have begun to describe what we are experiencing as a return to the early 1990s, that last period of major economic downturn and property-market collapse, when repossession men patrolled the land, and unhappy couples were trapped for years on end by the negative equity on shared homes they could not sell. On Thursday, the Guardian even treated us to one of its inimitable style pieces on the Nineties revival, majoring on "slip dresses, skinny jeans, and an economic slump", not to mention the return of the air-head television series Beverly Hills 90210.
And amid all this, it seemed thoroughly appropriate to note the re-emergence this week, on a Radio 4 history show, of the quiet, genial voice of John Major, the man who – amid the deep economic gloom of the time – narrowly won the 1992 British general election against what initially seemed like all the odds, and did so on a massive voter turn-out of almost 78 per cent. After a full 13 years of Tory rule, Neil Kinnock's Labour Party had enjoyed a narrow lead in the opinion polls throughout most of the campaign. But when push came to shove, swing-voters frightened of recession felt compelled to vote for what seemed like stability rather than change, often lying to pollsters as they did so.
All of which provides some interesting insights into the likely outcome of the two big elections – the American presidential vote, and the next British general election – now looming on the political horizon, for in both cases, it suddenly seems likely that victory will go to the candidate, or candidates, who seem to provide the greatest levels of stability, competence and reassurance – the least adventurous option, and the lowest levels of risk. Until last week, for example, it seemed obvious that in the US election campaign, John McCain would corner the market in grizzled experience and stability, while Barack Obama would be the candidate of radical change, struggling to inspire voters increasingly alarmed by the economic downturn, and, if I had been a betting woman, any time this past couple of months, I would have been putting money on McCain to win handsomely.
But now, paradoxically, the two candidates' slightly surprising choices of running mate have subtly changed the landscape. Sarah Palin may have brought a new edge of excitement to the Republican ticket. But the close public scrutiny to which she is now being subjected reveals her as a more than slightly flaky character, a former Alaskan nationalist, a ferociously ideological pro-lifer, and one of those fundamentalist Christians who thinks that the cause of American freedom is well served by the selective banning of library books.
And that edge of Northern Exposure wackiness in her politics, combined with Mr McCain's over-zealous attempts to portray himself as a maverick outsider, may just rob the Republican ticket of its perceived advantage as the voice of stability at the very time when Mr Obama has moved in the opposite direction, by choosing as his vice-presidential candidate the crushingly dull but formidably experienced Joe Biden, the one politician of the four who could reasonably be called a safe pair of hands.
As for the UK general election – well, it seems pretty clear that Gordon Brown's government, like the Major government after Black Wednesday, has now gone well past the point where voters will ever again associate it with either stability or competence. David Cameron now looks, to most English voters at least, like the most sensible and capable choice for next prime minister, and only by succumbing to the most foolish blandishments of his own market-fundamentalist right wing could Mr Cameron now contrive to forfeit that advantage.
Of course, some Labour big beasts such as Charles Clarke – unable, like political climate-change deniers, to believe in the scale of the meltdown facing their party – are still roaring from the sidelines about how Labour could restore its reputation with a brisk change of leader. But it's a measure of how far New Labour has fallen, since its last election victory in 2005, that there is now barely a Cabinet member, or senior back-bencher, who retains any real reputation for competence at all.
Every one of them is compromised by association with a government now most famous for losing control of the economy at the very moment when discipline was most necessary, for misleading people and parliament over the most crucial foreign policy decision of the past quarter century, and for being unable even to take proper care of critical government data. Of course there is no evidence that Mr Cameron and his team would do much better. But there comes a time when a government is so morally exhausted, and so internally confused, that the maintenance of political stability seems to require change, and some time in 2009 or 2010, for British voters at least, that time will come.
The full article contains 977 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
