An election to lose?

It seems that the Governor of the Bank of England has sized up the situation and found everything wanting. Which leaves me wondering why anyone would want to win this election. The situation in the next few years is going to be grim. So whoever wins will have to make cuts so sweeping, and therefore unpopular, that they will end up being kept “out of power for a whole generation”.

John Naughton sums up the situation well with some scary stats.

Could this be why Labour strategists don’t seem to be so panic-stricken at languishing in 3rd place? They would then be able to dump Brown (whose fault everything would then obviously be) and could then look forward to a bright future having rebranded themselves as New New Labour.

On the other hand, if I were David Cameron, I’d be wondering whether or not the least bad option is to see a Lib-Lab pact forming the next government (while being able to claim the moral high ground of the Tories being the largest individual party) and then waiting for another General Election in a year or so (by which time things had become truly awful).

Unless of course the voting system is changed… In which case one would probably never again have a party with an overall majority.

I’m feeling rather doom-laden about it all as you can perhaps tell… And while last night’s debate was a bit (but only a bit) better than the previous ones, to my mind, I still think we have are all losers by having them, as I posted the other day.