Budget bounces and European elections
Peter Hoskin over at Coffee House has forced my hand into looking at budget bounces, or the lack of them. The graph below shows the Labour lead in two YouGov polls immediately before the last seven budgets, and the two YouGov polls immediately after each one.
As you can see, there is hardly a history of Budgets leading to big improvements in Labour's position. They crept up a point in 2003, but realistically 2006 is the only one where the budget can really have been said to have resulted in a boost for the government (for the record, there was nothing particularly outstanding in the 2006 budget. There were no real headline grabbing tax changes and the centerpiece was simply more money for schools).
In contrast, the 2008 budget shows how badly they can go down. The 2008 budget made the recession real - suddenly all the talk about recession hit home when Alistair Darling actually stood up and said there were hard times ahead. I suspect Alistair Darling will have to relay some quite grim news at the next budget too, so wouldn't count on a boost for the government there.
So while Peter is right there, I would take issue with another assumption in the article. In Martin Kettle's original article (which Peter was responding too) it is taken as read that the European and local elections will be a disaster for Labour. I have no doubt that the local elections will be - the last time the county council elections were fought was the same day as Labour's 2005 general election victory, now they are being fought on a low turnout and normal mid-term protest voting Labour will be decimated.
The European elections on the other hand may be a different matter. In the YouGov poll on the Euro-elections conducted last month it showed both the Conservatives and Labour gaining support as UKIP collapse. Translated into seats, this would mean Labour receiving the biggest increase in seats at the election - a result emminently spinnable into a good news story. The local government election results are announced two days before the European results, so if it did happen Labour could get the bad local election news out of the way and then get good publicity from the Euros.
Still a long way away of course, polls could change and UKIP might not collapse, but don't assume Labour will lose MEPs.
