With respect it may be a totally different type of recession to you but to the bloke who has just lost his job it adds up to the same thing -he is out of work. Fairly or unfairly such people tend to blame the government of the day regardless of whether it is left wing , right wing or in the centre. Gordon Brown is already getting a significant portion of the blame because the economy has gone wrong on his watch. You doubtless feel that is unjust but whoever said politics was fair? It ain’t.
Are you really seriously suggesting John that all or nearly all those in the DE socio economic group who voted Labour in 2005 but come to lose their jobs in the next 12 months will STILL turn out in equal numbers and vote Labour in 2010?
Ever since Maggie Thatcher forced the Labour party to embrace capitalism there has been very little to choose between the two main parties so far as economic policies are concerned. The test today is competence. So long as this government was perceived to be running the economy reasonably well the electorate tolerated them. That perception has changed and explains why the polls have once again swung away from Labour as indeed several of us forecast it would on this site last autumn. Was it not Bill Clinton who once asked his staff to put up on their wall a sign saying ‘It’s the economy stupid’ ? Wise words.

People don’t bother to vote when they realise there’s no point – nothing in it for them. The bigger the difference between the two major parties, the more bothered people will be.

Thatcher appealed to the working classes in a way in which Cameron doesn’t (yet), and despite Cable’s performance, a big LibDem resurgence at the GE isn’t likely among them either.

Is there polling data on turnout amongst the unemployed?

1 It could be argued that it is precisely because the socio-economic groups who will suffer most from unemployment in the next 12 months are natural Labour supporters that makes the government so vulnerable on this issue. This is their core support and it’s under threat.There are no Tory votes in danger here.

2 I grant you that relatively few of those in the DE’s thrown out of work in the next 12 months are likely to vote Tory or Lib Dem or that the DE’s will be anything other than solid Labour but I simply do not agree that they will turn out in the same numbers as in 2005 and vote Labour again. I do not believe that the majority who lose their jobs will bother to vote at all although some might even vote BNP.

3 In 1979-remember ‘Labour is’nt working’ ?- we had a very similar situation. Why should it be any different come 2010? Rising unemployment under a Labour government=net loss of Labour votes.

He isn’t getting any “stick”…?

He has a queue of people posting ,whose jaws dropped as low as his having heard Turner & Sants today before the Treasury Select Committee.

Ye Gods.
It is all truly astounding & utterly outrageous.

If GB says “it started in America” and/or “we need Global supervision” ever again after this he should resign.