"Strong and stable"

Whenever I’m faced with a particular claim, I like to ask: what would count as empirical evidence here? So let’s apply this test to Ms May’s claim that she offers “strong and stable” leadership. What evidence could there be here?

There’s one obvious test – the indices of economic policy uncertainty complied by Scott Baker, Nick Bloom and Steven Davis. If a government offers strong and stable leadership, it should deliver low policy uncertainty. So, do the Tories do this?

No. Under the 1997-2010 Labour government, the monthly policy uncertainty index averaged 93.9. Under the Tories, it has averaged 286.

We’ve also got daily data since 2001. This shows that the uncertainty index averaged 208 during Blair’s premiership, 299.8 under Brown’s, 300.7 under Cameron’s and 467.5 under May’s*. The data therefore show that May has given us less “strong and stable” leadership than her three predecessors.

Now, you might object here that policy uncertainty isn’t wholly within the control of the government; it’s affected by exogenous events. You’d be wholly correct. The higher uncertainty during Brown’s premiership, for example, was due to the banking crisis for which he was (at most) only partly to blame.

But Brexit isn’t exogenous. It’s the result of David Cameron’s weak leadership: his caving into euro-obsessives by offering a referendum; his pursuit of austerity policies that fuelled resentment at immigrants: and his failure to convince voters to stay in the EU. And yet he too claimed to be offering the same “strong and stable” leadership that May’s offering. In 2015, he tweeted:

Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband

That now looks laughable. Which raises the question: why isn’t May’s claim seen as anything other than as risible as that?

One reason is that political journalists don’t ask the question I do. They under-rate the importance of ground truth and take politicians at face value. So they believe May offers stability just as they believed that Osborne’s talk of a “northern powerhouse” meant he believed in devolution when in fact his cuts to local government resulted into more power being centralized in Whitehall.

Another reason is that the Tories are the natural party of government whereas Labour are not. And Labour’s promise to raise taxes on the well-off, of course, means the party is a threat to the only people who matter. The rich have always mistaken their own interests for the national interest.

And I’ll concede that Jeremy Corbyn’s incompetence and ill-discipline means he is ill-equipped to negotiate Brexit**. The Tories, however, are in no position to point this out. Their claims that Labour can’t deal with Brexit sound like the whines of a Bullingdon boy who, having puked up all over his room, complains that his scout isn’t cleaning up properly.

Whatever the reason, though, one thing is clear. Tory claims to offer “strong and stable” leadership are simply inconsistent with the facts.

* The monthly and daily indices have different bases, so aren’t comparable with each other.

** This isn’t true of his colleagues, though. Keir Starmer’s legal background suggests he’s better qualified to negotiate than most others are.

Comments

[cjcjc]

I have no idea what the scale of this index is even beginning to try to tell us.
But there is something strongly counter-intuitive about the recent levels of "uncertainty" (600-1200 on this mysterious scale) relative to the levels supposedly prevailing at the time of the financial crisis.
As you know other measures of risk (I know that's not precisely the same as uncertainty) such as implied volatility in the stockmarket are clearly much much lower.
I think I know which period I consider the more uncertain!!