Something has gone wrong. Elections are a time to cheer up the voters, even, dare one say it, to bribe them. Britain’s politicians seemed joined instead in a bidding war to beat them up. With an election due next summer, competing visions of sunlit uplands have made way for promises of long winters of austerity. Britain risks being drowned in pessimism.
The nation’s economy is not in great shape. That perhaps is an understatement. A decade-long spending and borrowing binge followed by a deep recession has left the public finances in dire straits. The next few years will be tough: belts will have to be tightened by more than a notch, and taxes will rise. But surely there is more to politics than arguing over how deeply to slice into public spending?
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