Avoiding talk of the deficit has been a systematic feature of Labour’s contribution to the economic debate

Ed Miliband was roundly mocked for ‘forgetting’ to mention the deficit in his speech to the Labour Party conference. However, as Jack Blumenau shows in this post, avoiding talk of the deficit is a systematic feature of Labour’s contributions to the political debate about the economy over the past four years. In a statistical analysis of parliamentary speeches, he shows that Conservative MPs are considerably more likely than Labour MPs to emphasise the deficit when debating economic issues. By contrast, Labour pays more attention to unemployment, austerity, and government cuts. One interpretation of these results is that Labour MPs strategically emphasise the issues on which the party holds a comparative advantage, and avoid issues which favour the Conservative party.