by David Mills
THE mixed reviews Barack Obama’s financial stimulus package received this week proves that framing policy to deal with a global downturn is a challenge which taxes even the most accomplished of political operators.
Part of the problem Obama faced was managing expectations. The world was waiting for a clear and detailed package, and when it received something less than the degree of detail it had expected, the markets plunged – as did the new President’s ratings among America’s political columnists. Obama prospered during the election, and in his period as President-elect, through not being George W Bush and therefore being able to avoid blame for the problems the American economy faces. Yet now Obama has taken his first steps to rescue the banks and consumer confidence, he left himself open to blame if things do not improve as a result of his actions. Such risks are the price one pays for being in power.
In Britain, Labour faces the opposite problem. Having been in power for more than a decade, the Government cannot hope to benefit from being a new broom. Instead, the party has to explain its own conduct in power and then try to shift the political debate onto more fruitful territory – difficult though that is when almost every day’s news cycle is dominated by economic events at home and abroad.
Bereavement experts sometimes speak of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. By giving such a downbeat assessment of the economy this week and suggesting that the recession may be the worst for 100 years, Schools Secretary Ed Balls may have been attempting to move the public debate on the economic situation through the fourth phase and into the fifth, in the hope that, over the next 12 months, public opinion will shift onto the kind of response people want to see from their Government and, for the medium term, ground on which senior Labour politicians feel they are well placed to build convincing arguments.
Leaving aside dealing with the immediate economic situation, the political challenge for the Government is to find a way of differentiating itself from the Conservative Party which has deftly avoided being pinned down on specifics of domestic policy and which will in all likelihood attempt to continue to be elusive for months to come. Yet such tactics can backfire – leaving a vacuum where policy should be can leave the ground open for your opponents to paint a less than flattering picture of your intentions.
Debates about how exactly to attack David Cameron and the Tories are currently occupying Labour’s high command. They must be aware that simply painting the opposition as throwbacks to Thatcherism is not without risks, not least because stories of how the Conservatives dealt with the recessions of the 1980s have lost a lot of their saliency – outside Labour’s heartlands, at least. Time is ticking away and Labour does not have long in which to find a convincing message about Conservative intentions and start getting it into the minds of voters.
