As I wrote the other day, the British public is increasingly blaming the Prime Minister for the country’s economic problems. He’s no longer regarded as a steady hand on the tiller, but – instead – as a fiscal menace. A key aspect of Brown’s latest relaunch, then, is to reverse this opinion; to convince people that he’ll get them through the difficult times. It’s a message he concentrated on in his various interviews this morning.
Will it work? The problem for Brown is that circumstances are going against him. Mervyn King’s just stepped out to say: “Don’t expect interest rates cuts for the next two years; inflation’s going to be much worse than we thought”. This bleak prediction is splashed across the covers of today’s papers. It adds to the sense that matters are now out of Brown’s hands – inflation’s going to sky-rocket, and people’s day-to-day situations are going to worsen, regardless of what policies come out of Downing Street.
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