Blog
Matthew Taylor
The Conservatives are still favourites to win the next election. But, as I said yesterday, things are closer and more uncertain than anyone would have predicted a few months ago. There is no question thus far that the economic crisis has been good for Labour and bad for the Tories. This too was unpredictable. There is no simple correlation between the state of the economy and the ruling party’s fortunes; parties can win in bad times, as the Conservatives demonstrated in 1992. But thinking about moments when stories of economic crisis have dominated the news; devaluation in the pound in November 1967, taking an emergency loan from the IMF in September 1976, and leaving the ERM in September 1992, each has damaged the Government’s standing and each been followed by its defeat at the subsequent General Election.