Thursday 1st May

It would seem as though the long recession is over, finally.  We have now had over a year of good GDP figures and there can be little doubt that the economy is recovering.  Especially if you live in London or the South East; I am not so sure that the rest of the country is doing anything like as well.  Another interesting quirk of the figures is that there has been an increase in population over the last four or five years, which should, by all economic laws, mean that the economy would have grown anyway, even if in fact everything was static.  Actually GDP per head, if anyone can begin to understand such a concept has barely improved at all.

It seems that unlike many previous recessions, by and large, employers have chosen to retain staff and take smaller profits rather than make swathes redundant as happened in the past.  Which is of course a good thing.  So how will all of this pan out electorally?  Surprisingly it may not help the Tories as much as they think.  Firstly if there is not so much danger of economic disaster the state of the economy looms less large in peoples list of concerns.  They may have welcomed the idea of cuts when we were looking into a black hole, but now that things are looking better the desirability of cuts becomes less obvious.  All of this is subjective anyway and anyone who thinks they can predict public opinion a year ahead is a fool.

There is still a year to go before the next election and I suspect it will be lost by the party seen to make the most cock-ups.  There is no great love for the Tories and I cannot see them improving their poll ratings much before the next election.  Likewise Labour isn’t particularly loved either and Milliband does seem to have an image problem which could deny them votes.  The Lib-Dems are half the force they were, and no-one can be sure where their votes will go.  Then there is UKIP, who keep banging the only drum they know – Immigration, mostly from Europe, and many lazy people who don’t want to listen to the arguments will be tempted to vote for them.

Suddenly the economy which was so important seems less so now.  Immigration, and the fear it engenders is the only show in town.