Can harsh medicine taste nice?

This morning a series of Government spokespeople were on our airwaves, claiming that everyone would be better off as a result of the changes to tax credits and the living wage. And not just better off in the long term (after we take our medicine) but better off immediately, with nobody losing out. I’m sure the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) will now enjoy a few happy days of toe-to-toe statistical battling with the Conservatives. But there is a deeper issue here. Successful efforts to get a grip on the public finances tend to have two characteristics. They are seen as necessary, and the way they are approached is seen as having an underlying sense of fairness. We wrote a lot about this back in 2010. Looking back, it’s clear the Coalition government won the battle to demonstrate that austerity was necessary – by two to one the public agreed with this throughout the last parliament. But it lost the battle on fairness. In the very early days, the public was split on whether the cuts were fair or not. But by the end of 2010, again by roughly two to one, they saw them as being unfair. Government messaging around benefit changes risks undermining feelings that cuts are both necessity and fair. “Harsh medicine is necessary, but it’s going to taste really nice” is a lovely line, but not very believable. Many will see this as just bad spin. But it’s also possible that some will conclude that actually there is no need for pain. It’s a small step from there to concluding that austerity is not necessary after all.