An avalanche of vitriolic personal denunciation was the inevitable result. But it was too little, too late. Which of the two major contenders for government office is most capable of managing the economy and hence delivering improved living standards, jobs and stable prices?
Under this free market model economic activity was skewed by an inflated and inadequately regulated financial sector prone to speculative activity — which was why the UK had suffered so severely from the financial crash. This was coupled with a low-skill, low-wage growth model characterised by insecure and precarious work that stifled productivity and growth, and exacerbated labour exploitation.
Whilst growth did revive in it was unstable because wage stagnation depressed demand causing heavy reliance on high private debt and a re-ignited housing bubble.
But, for Miliband, an additional problem was that many influential voices in the party did not even believe the effort was worthwhile. Thus whilst they pledged to eliminate the current budget deficit — the gap between tax revenues and day-to-day spending — within the next parliamentary term, they rejected the much tighter Tory goal of an overall budgetary surplus, promising to proceed more slowly on deficit reduction and to rely more on higher taxes.
Cheap labour was being sucked in because employers were competing on price rather than quality, and rather than investing were expanding low-paid jobs at pay rates many British people were reluctant to accept.
His remedy was to strengthen labour protection, tighten regulations governing working conditions and inhibit employers from undercutting wages through imported labour.
It soon became apparent that, whatever its merits, this initial approach was not assuaging voter insecurities and not arresting defections from Labour. The manifesto combined elements of the two approaches coupling labour market reforms with promises to reduce low-skilled immigration from outside the EU, prevent EU migrants from claiming benefits for at least two years and from claiming child benefit for children living outside the UK and stronger action to stop illegal immigration.
Miliband acknowledged that the previous government had tended to ignore the impact of migrant labour on wage levels, especially amongst the low paid, though he tended to skirt the impact on social cohesion as the native population struggled to adapt to the heavy influx of immigrants, many with different cultures, customs, languages and values.
And no amount of tough-talking rhetoric […] has helped our case a jot. But this did not alienate popular support. Framing involves selecting, highlighting and presenting aspects of perceived reality in a way that privileges a particular diagnosis of the problem, invokes a moral evaluation, and prescribes a remedy.
Survey evidence has chronicled the growing popularity of the former at the expense of the latter. As long ago as one commentator had noted how adept Thatcherism was at negative stereotyping.
The right of the party was clearer in its strategy. But he was caught in a dilemma, as the Tories well knew. The point about predicaments is they cannot easily be escaped and on this, the fourth predicament, Labour did not.
Imagine human beings living in an underground den which is open towards the light; they have been there from childhood […. At a distance there is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners a raised way, and a low wall is built along the way, like the screen over which marionette players show their puppets. Behind the wall appear moving figures, who hold in their hands various works of art, and among them images of men and animals, wood and stone, and some of the passers-by are talking and others silent.
Plato, The Republic. For most politicians and many commentators the extent to which these attitudes corresponded to a verifiable reality is not an issue of any real importance. Rational choice theory takes it as axiomatic that voters act as informed rational decision-makers whilst valence theorists seem uninterested in how voters use heuristics to make evaluations.
Equally, it was not a matter that interested the bulk of Labour politicians. Its hypothesis is that the gap between perception and reality is, for many, wide with the majority of voters having at best a desultory interest in politics, a meagre awareness of the issues and little appetite to find out more.
Take, for example, the issue of immigration. The ease with which social benefits could be accessed and their generosity were both grossly exaggerated See table below. Source: Independent 4 January To explain and conceptualise the difference between the two, we need to understand the psychological mechanisms through which people process political information. Though it is commonly assumed that people absorb messages and formulate opinions in more or less the same way, research has consistently shown that this is not the case.
People differ considerably in their reasoning capacity, their use and application of concepts and in the contextual knowledge they have at their disposal. Higher levels of education, as one would expect, provide people with greater ability to process and more motivation to search out information as well as more skill in assessing it by manipulating concepts. In fact, as indicated above, the majority of people consume political messages and information with a very modest degree of rational engagement.
They do not attend closely to what is happening, do not utilise reliable sources of information, do not engage in prolonged cognitive activity, find handling abstract concepts time-consuming and often rely on affect-driven heuristics in making judgments.
Some find the constant change, impenetrable language and many layers of political structures complicated and confusing. In this process negative or positive cues — e. This rapidly evolved into a major news item with hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. It appeared to operate as an effective persuasion cue consolidating a highly negative image of Miliband. The first point to stress is that is that whilst opinion-formation is an individual act it takes place in a collective process and in a social context.
People, in responding to events and making judgments draw heavily upon the wider world of debate, argument and political advocacy. Public opinion is not fixed and immutable. This brings us to the third, fundamental, point. Reality is not simply a given set of facts containing their own, intrinsic meaning: it is the outcome of a process of construction.
Some might argue that this simply reflected objective circumstances from onwards, with rapidly falling unemployment, revived growth and price stability. This certainly gave some credence to Tory claims. On the other hand, the period was one of stagnant and for many falling living standards and growing economic insecurity. The post-recession recovery has been the most sluggish on record, productivity had hardly risen and was lagging well behind comparable countries and the UK was running a very high balance of payments deficit.
Economic issues are incredibly complex and research has found that most voters are unfamiliar with economic concepts and experience difficulty in making sense of economic data. Two considerations seem to have been particularly influential:. The economic narrative propounded by the Coalition to depict the economic crisis was simple, cogent and straightforward with the adept use of easily-digested and vivid images and pithy, punchy soundbites all of which were endlessly repeated.
The financial crash occurred had occurred on its watch. Labour had brought the economy to the edge of bankruptcy through extravagant over-spending and piling-up debt.
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Schoolboy, 10, mauled to death by lb 'Beast' dog suffered unsurvivable 'injuries to the head and neck', Range Rover mother who rammed Insulate Britain protestors on the school run launches her own range of MERCH 'We are heartbroken': Family of celebrity chef who invented the 'world's healthiest meal' say 'words cannot Killer knifeman on the loose in Brentford: Police launch urgent search after man in his 20s stabbed to death Three unvaccinated carers sacked from same home in Birmingham reveal 'heartbreak' at being forced to leave Ex-England star Matt Le Tissier is blasted for sharing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories amid fears online Stay home to protect the NHS even when Covid is dropping?
Boris compares Europe's escalating Covid outbreak to 'storm clouds' that could hit Britain next as daily UK Climate deal in crisis: Cop26 plan to save the planet is watered down as China and other major polluters Heiress wears FOUR gowns and cries during emotional nuptials Where did David Cameron go to school? How old is Ed Miliband? Where did Ed Miliband go to school? Justine Thornton, a barrister specialising in environment law and also a former child actor.
Where did Nick Clegg go to school? Clegg went to Westminster school in London, a public school whose other famous recent alumni include Louis Theroux who Clegg went on an American roadtrip with , Channel 4 news presenter Matt Frei and the singer Dido.
Clegg did his undergraduate degree in archaeology and anthropology at Robinson College, Cambridge before studying at the University of Minnesota and the College of Europe in Bruges.
Where does Nick Clegg live? He also has a residence in his Sheffield Hallam constituency. How tall is Nigel Farage? Who is Nigel Farage married to? Where did Nigel Farage go to school? Dulwich College, a public school in south London — other famous alumni include actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and England one-day cricket captain Eoin Morgan.
Unlike the other party leaders, Farage does not have a university degree.
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