Politics is becoming unpredictable, we are told, yet as the election approaches, political interviews have started to follow an identical script. The party leader or minister in question announces their policy: lowering student fees, say, or building social housing. Immediately the interviewer barks back: ‘And how are you going to pay for that?’
On Radio 4’s Today, on Question Time, even on Channel 4 News, politics is now universally presented as a household budget. The BBC’s Robert Peston responded to Ed Miliband’s announcement on student fees with a characteristic raised eyebrow and sucking-in of breath: “To be a credible commitment – at a time when the public sector deficit is £91bn – Labour would have to find a new tax to cover the significant cost … so Ed Balls has been asked to make the sums add up”. Credibility, covering costs, sums adding up: this is the banal weekly-shop lexicon of the contemporary political imagination. Having signed up to the Coalition’s priority of a balanced budget, Ed Miliband has explained that he will ‘pay for’ the policy with a tax on pensions. ‘Good lord, where would you get the money from for that?’ was Nick Ferrari’s reply to Natalie Bennett’s plan to build 500,000 new social homes.
Content from our partners
