It doesn't seem fair. When the economy is tanking, the government gets the blame. When it recovers, voters tend to give short shrift. Just ask John Major, who couldn't even convince one in three Britons to support the Conservatives in 1997 despite overseeing 22 consecutive quarters of GDP growth and inflation at 2.6 per cent. All anyone wanted to talk about was sleaze, divisions and Black Wednesday.
No one enjoys bashing the public more than I do, but this is a tad simplistic. Yes, Major lost his job despite bequeathing to his successor the most benign economic inheritance in modern times. But cast your mind back to 1997: public services were underfunded, backbench MPs were in the news for increasingly bizarre proclivities and the government did not possess a coherent position on a central plank of the UK's foreign policy.
