Via Paul Waugh I came across this interview with The Thick Of It creator Armando Iannucci, whose comments on the state of the two main parties perfectly summarise the issues facing both of them.

Who will Iannucci vote for? He lets out an exasperated sigh. “I really don’t know. I am honestly at a loss. My natural instinct is to waver between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but I just worry that politics is failing. And I think people are baffled by it. David Cameron is way ahead in the polls but I don’t get any sense of national euphoria at the dawn of a Cameron government.

“I don’t think there’s going to be dancing in the streets. I think it will be like…” he pauses and laughs. “It will be like knowing you have to go in for a knee operation. You know it’s going to happen, it’ll get done and you’ll probably walk a little bit better a result, but you’re not really looking forward to it. I think that’s the feeling that people have.”

Iannucci is quite right. There is no wave of euphoria or even mild enthusiasm for the Conservatives sweeping the nation. Tory supporters may not care – a victory is a victory and who can complain about the voters’ motives if they produce the right result? But a situation in which the opposition is ahead but seen as offering something potentially unpleasant is a position that can be ground down in an election campaign. Moreover it leaves them very exposed, should they win, to a potentially short honeymoon.

At the same time, Labour’s problem is exactly that a party – the Conservatives – whose policies would have worsened the recession and which would reduce demand by slashing public spending and neglecting investment may be seen as offering any form of medicine at all. As Iannucci puts it, a knee operation that may mean you walk a bit better, or, to put it another way, a painful but necessary visit to the dentist. That a significant proportion of the electorate has a feeling that the operation is required, and that the Tories are the ones to administer it – and that it would a positive effect – is the basic problem for Labour.

Labour is in this position one, because no government during a recession is going to be wildly popular, but two because the political agenda has shifted over to what scale of cuts should be made. In fact the public finances are in the position they are in not because of excessive spending but because tax revenues have fallen along with output, profits and employment. Huge amounts of money have been passed from the public to bank shareholders and executives. These two factors are the problem, not spending on public services.

Samuel Brittan – no a left wing commentator by any stretch of the imagination – wrote recently in the FT:

“The British political classes are going through one of their occasional bouts of masochism, with party leaders vying with each other on the theme of who can cut public spending faster and more effectively … My own bottom line is that all this is in response to a largely imaginary budget crisis. If we have a normal economic recovery the red ink will diminish remarkably quickly. If we don’t, it won’t and won’t need to.”

Until Labour changes the terms of the debate away from the need for cuts and instead onto the need to restore real growth and raise investment the Tories will be able to make the public sector the scapegoat. In those circumstances a significant number of people will continue to feel that the knee operation is required.

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[This was originally posted yesterday but was a victim of a temporary server problem]