UK political economy: Gordon Brown has been a lucky man. Sure, the UK prime minister is fighting to keep his job. But if – as political commentators often say – what matters most to voters is the economy, he would have left Number 10 months ago. It took weak management of an old fashioned political scandal to get Brown into serious trouble.
Indeed, the prime minister has had a remarkably good crisis. Despite his responsibility for overseeing the UK economy during the years of financial excess, he gained credit for being a decisive manager when the bubble turned to bust. He escaped blame for a housing crash and the state’s near takeover of much of the banking system, not to mention for a 7 per cent unemployment rate and for running a record government deficit in peacetime.
Voters, like investors, seem to be glad that the wholesale nationalisation of the banking sector was avoided. Big deficits seem to be tomorrow’s problem.
Indeed, the damning economic charge sheet is only a secondary concern. Grumbling about higher taxes has been muted by the prime minister’s desire to soak the rich. The big issue is Brown’s perceived weak response to the disclosure that many members of parliament, including some ministers, have taken a free and easy approach to expense accounts.
Brown could have done better. His Labour party has hardly been more abusive of the expenses system than the opposition Conservatives. Brown certainly lacks the charisma of Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister has been able to tough out far more embarrassing accusations than parliamentary fiddling.
But the fiddling has led to a total collapse in Brown’s authority. On Friday, he failed to shuffle Ed Balls, a longstanding ministerial ally, into the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Alistair Darling is staying. The terrible British economic backdrop just happens to have made the prime minister more vulnerable. Were unemployment low and house prices rising, the forces against him might never have gained their momentum. But in UK politics, it’s stupid to think that the economy rules.