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We're doomed!

At least that seems to be the opinion of those pundits struggling to see a way through the current economic difficulties. Whether we plump for the famed, though scant-in-evidence, intellect of "Flash Gordon" Brown, saviour of the universe, or Mayonnaise Cameron (rich, thick and oily - with apologies to Terry Pratchett), or the gaffe-prone, and therefore well-called Calamity Clegg, it is clear we are tripping the light fantastic blindfold through an economic minefield.

Of course, there are differences between the parties - but such differences are so seemingly miniscule because they all want to dance on the head of the same pin, to all bang on the same bongo with hands more fitted for the timpani. The reasons for this are obvious - the various press institutions have corralled public opinion in such a way that any but the long, straight road of social democracy wears the sign "there be dragons". And truly has any attempted foray into the badlands of either Stalin or, for an extreme, Hitler ('though Hitler was a socialist, his doctrine is forever tied with the extreme right wing) seen its exponent soundly excoriated at the polls.

The eighties saw an un-electable Labour kept in check by its own "loony left" tendency and sometime weak leadership in the face of that dominatrix of British premiership, Margaret Thatcher; but it was that same Iron Lady who, when her party jettisoned her from Number Ten, brought in the quiet, unassuming, leaden grey of John Major, whose lack of whip and manacle turned the party into more of a rave. Ironically, this penchant for ill-behaviour gave the thoroughly unprincipled Blair and his Labour cohorts the supreme gift, the reputation for economic competence (which properly belonged to Major's man, Kenneth Clarke). And since the 1997 Labour landslide, the public has shied away from such extremes as Michael "to-the-right-of-Attila-the-Hu n" Howard, and been heartily sick of the strange Ian Duncan Smith - whilst blinded and bamboozled by Blair's smoke and Peter Mandelson's mirrors.

Opinion polls - which being statistics are the more advanced and pernicious bedfellows of lies and damned lies, but which are nevertheless believed as being Fagin against Bill Sykes - maintain that those who, therefore, follow certain paths are more likely to win favour with their electorate; that electorate, however, is not so much the voters but the media moguls. What the unprincipled octogenarian Australian, Rupert Murdoch, cares about the British people couldn't fill a single column inch in one of his most tawdry rags, and yet people forget that as the payer of the journalistic piper, he calls the tenor of the tunes said piper plays through his organs. But then the same is, and has always been, true of all shades of journalistic emperor, from Conrad Black to Robert Maxwell to the Barclay Brothers. Such is our supposed democracy.

On that basis, it is likely that Brown will cede power to David Cameron whenever the election is held. If it is to be held in the spring of 2009, as many suspect, Brown will probably have a better chance of winning than if he leaves it later. The problem is, Brown is wearing the mantle Blair stole from the Conservatives in '97, the mantle of economic competence - and as we go into the recession and discover that through the profligacy of Brown's campaigns we are less well able to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous banking practices, by and by the mantle will shift back to the Conservatives. Whether, of course, the Conservatives are better able to wear it is another matter, but unless they are significantly the worse, there will be a change of leadership.

Learn more about this author, Tabitha Hergest.
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