Looking both ways at once

Last week, we pointed out the interesting finding lurking in a ComRes poll, which showed that on one of the central dividing lines of this election, the public appeared to have contradictory views.

Some 61% wanted the Government to “maintain current public spending plans in order to keep the recovery going”, whilst 57% wanted them to “cut public spending now to avoid higher taxes later”. The public seemed to want both of two completely contradictory stances.

Amusing (or depressing?) as it was, of course, this didn’t tell you how many of the public held such contradictory views, merely that the ‘public’, in the aggregate, did. Thanks to Andrew Hawkins of ComRes, however, who has now supplied some more detailed data, we can identify Britain’s confused voters in a bit more detail.

First, there’s a handful of respondents who refused to answer one or both of the questions, along with 15% of the sample who said that they didn’t know to one or either option.

That leaves four more substantive groups. There were those who a) wanted spending maintained and not cut (26%), and there were those who b) wanted spending cut and not maintained (21%). That makes 47% of the survey who took a logically consistent position.

But a full 31% of the sample came out in favour of both options. That is, they wanted spending both cut and maintained. That is more than came out for either a) or b).

There was also some 7% who rejected both options. In itself, this isn’t illogical (and certainly not as illogical as wanting both options). I might reject both options because in fact I favour increasing spending, an option that wasn’t provided.

Or I could favour maintaining spending but not ‘in order to keep the recovery going’, but for some other reason. Similarly, I might want a cut in public spending, but not ‘to avoid higher taxes later’. So we should assume some of those 7% are answering logically.

Equally, however, we suspect that some are just inconsistent. With no other way of dividing them, let’s split them 50/50.

That makes roughly 50% - just half – of voters who gave consistent answers to those two questions, whilst 35% - or more than a third – who gave inconsistent answers. And remember: this was hardly some minor, trivial, issue, but one of the key dividing lines between the two main parties.

Who’d be a politician faced with voters like that?

Professor Philip Cowley

Trust the people?

"As Andrew Hawkins of ComRes noted in his commentary, ‘clearly a lot of people are very confused......’"

Sunday’s ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday/Sunday Mirror contained two questions designed to tap into one of the central dividing lines of the election – what to do about public spending. Its findings are very revealing.

First, they asked this: “The Government should maintain current public spending plans in order to keep the recovery going”

Agree: 61%
Disagree 29%

Perhaps not surprisingly, younger people and those in poorer social groups were most likely to agree. Good news for Labour, you might think, given that this is their stance, and they appear to have almost two thirds of the public behind them.

But then they asked this: “The Government should cut public spending now to avoid higher taxes later”.

Agree 57%
Disagree 34%

As with the previous question, younger people and those in poorer social groups were the most likely to agree.

These are two totally contradictory stances – and yet the public want both of them. They want public spending both maintained and cut.

As Andrew Hawkins of ComRes noted in his commentary, ‘clearly a lot of people are very confused......’

Professor Philip Cowley

Letters From Economists

"The tale of the 364 may simply illustrate that the backing of economists – though rhetorically useful for politicians – is not a reliable guide to good policy..."

Those following the on-going debate about how and when to reduce the deficit will have seen a letter printed in last Thursday’s Daily Telegraph. Signed by almost sixty academic economists, it is the second to back Labour’s plans to delay spending cuts until ‘the recovery is well underway’, and warned that Conservative plans to cut immediately could ‘imperil not only jobs but also the prospects for reducing the deficit’.

It serves as a response to similar letters from business leaders and yet more economists warning that the Labour Party’s approach to managing the economic recovery poses exactly the same risks as the Tory strategy for cutting the deficit.

Those with longer political memories, though, will recall a similar letter of March 1981, when Geoffrey Howe’s monetarist, deflationary budget provoked howls of derision from professional economists. In the depths of a recession and at a time of growing unemployment, Howe and Margaret Thatcher had proposed substantial increases in taxation alongside substantial cuts in public borrowing – precisely the reverse of the counter-cyclical policies advocated by the Keynesian economists who then dominated the profession.

The response to these measures was a letter to The Times, signed by 364 academic economists from universities across Britain, condemning the budget as having ‘no basis in economic theory’ and as posing a significant risk to ‘the industrial basis of our economy and… its social and political stability’. The signatories urged the government to ‘reject monetarist policies and consider urgently which alternative offers the best hope of sustained recovery’.

The letter had been signed by a cross-section of the most eminent names in economics – including James Meade, Amartya Sen, Alec Cairncross, and Nicholas Kaldor, alongside the present Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King (not to mention one of my former tutors) – and appeared to demonstrate the utter intellectual isolation of the government. When challenged, Mrs Thatcher was able to name two economists who supported the measures in the budget – her own advisors, Alan Walters and Patrick Minford – but one civil servant is said to have quipped afterwards that it was a good job she hadn’t been asked to name three.

Nearly thirty years on, however, the conventional wisdom would have it that the 364 economists were wrong and that Howe and Thatcher were right (although some of the signatories continue to defend their position). Although unemployment continued to rise, and would not peak until 1986, the prophesised depression never arrived. Indeed, an economic recovery began within weeks of the letter’s publication and seemed to make a mockery of the economists’ predictions.

The tale of the 364 may simply illustrate that the backing of economists – though rhetorically useful for politicians – is not a reliable guide to good policy. 

Matthew Francis