Green shoots (2)
- 16 Jan 09, 01:30 PM
As promised yesterday, here's my response to those of you who didn't like the coverage of the Shriti Vadera story.
Davidurquhart called it "an absolutely nothing story"; Younghal called it "over-hyped". The criticism, if I can sum it up, seems to be that since the business minister isn't the chancellor, and since she didn't first use the phrase herself (that is, since it was suggested to her by an interviewer and it shone no light on the government's attitude to the recession), this was not a legitimate news story.
My answer is simple - this was a day of heavy job losses and gloomy economic news. Shriti Vadera - who is not only the business minister but the closest economic adviser to the prime minister - did herself use the phrase "green shoots", a phrase Gordon Brown had again and again attacked Norman Lamont for using in the early the 1990s.
The question of whether this government was downplaying the prospect of the recession before it happened and then being over-optimistic about the likelihood and timescale of recovery is an important one.
For example, the Tories suggest that the economic forecasts in the chancellor's pre-Budget report are hopelessly optimistic. Indeed, Baroness Vedera herself was interviewed in the Telegraph in March and said that what made this crunch different from those of 10 or 20 years ago was that they had come with redundancies and closures. The implication here was that this time we might not see those things - but that is not how it has turned out.
Evidence that she saw the problem with her remarks was the fact that she did interviews and, in effect, apologised for her words. What's more, her boss Peter Mandelson said that she wouldn't say the phrase "green shoots" again and that he didn't agree with that analysis.
No-one is claiming that this is the story of the year, let alone of the decade - but it was a legitimate story that did reflect on an important debate within politics and that came alongside the many detailed analytical stories we have done about the government's economic policies and the proposals from the opposition.
