Running the national economy is like driving in a motor race. Except that you are four inches tall. You don’t know where you are and you don’t have a map. There are lots of pedals, but you don’t know what they are supposed to do. When you press them, they sometimes make the car lurch around unpredictably, sometimes just blow out air or wipe the windows. The other drivers don’t agree on the rules. Some of them seem to be playing Grand Theft Auto.
Oh, and by the way, a couple of other guys are fighting you for a share of the controls. And just one more thing – You are on the stage, with an audience of sixty million! Fortunately, perhaps, most of them can’t be bothered to watch.
So what sort of game is this? Can we look at it objectively, as a game theorist would do, and work out how best to play it?
Well, first of all, playing it straight is obviously a mug’s game. The chances of genuinely sorting out the economy by making the right move, at the right time, for the right reasons, look pretty slim. How often has anyone really done that, and made it up onto the victor’s podium? Not since Roosevelt…
Playing to the gallery looks a much smarter idea. There are loads of simple crowd-pleasing manoeuvres you can try. Like revving wildly and making a big noise; or deflating your opponent’s tyres; or, purloining the winning post and erecting it alongside your car….!
Now kiddies, let’s watch as today’s racing politicos put these clever ideas into practice. When Brown says “I am applying Keynesian economics to create a fiscal stimulus”, he knows it sounds more prime-ministerial than “Gosh, we’re skint, can anyone lend me a quid?” When Brown calls for “globally coordinated economic policies”, it sounds better than saying “I am standing in deep doo-doo. Please join me so that I won’t look so conspicuous!”
While Brown struggles to scrub himself clean, Osborne dishes more dirt. “I fear a run on the pound” can be translated as “I hope Gordon’s going to trip up, especially when I stick my foot out.” Whereas “We cannot promise tax cuts in the current economic climate” means “We’re going to sit on the fence, and blame Gordon for putting us there!”
To be serious though, Labour do have a viable strategy to garner good publicity out of economic mayhem. Equally, the Tories realise that it is crucial for them to scupper it. The Achilles heel, for both of these strategies, is that they are so strongly partisan. So, our opportunity is to be the people who tell it like it is, who say things which the independent commentators won’t rubbish, and who gain public trust and respect. That is what Vince does so well.
Crucially, Labour and the Tories also understand the vital need to look deeply serious, to pretend to a depth of expertise they do not have, and to seem to empathise with a worried public. How do we rate?
Well, our tax cuts for the less well off are certainly popular. So is getting tough with rich bankers. But we fall short, I suggest, on three counts.
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