Behavioural politics
There has been a very clever policy announcement from the Tories today. Imagine you worked in Conservative Central Office and you wanted to buy some votes - I mean, to allocate public resources in the way most popular with the voters. Imagine you announced a £1 billion tax cut. It would be easy for Labour to paint that as irresponsible; and the benefits (£20 per person or £50 per household) would be too small to make a difference in voting intention. Imagine instead then, that you decided to announce £1 billion of public spending. It would be hard to target the spending in such a way as to create a big enough incentive to influence enough marginal voters. And more significantly, it would do major damage to the "cuts and efficiency" brand you have carefully built during the campaign. So what have those smart policy inventors come up with instead, for the same price? They're going to compensate investors who lost money in the collapse of Equitable Life. With a si...