Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

Why Covid hasn’t been Boris’s Black Wednesday

Where are we again? Oh yes: a newish Conservative prime minister has confounded his critics by winning a general election that most expected would lead to a hung parliament. The result has caused Labour to drop its leader and replace him with someone more reassuring and substantial. And before the Government can work on its main domestic agenda, a giant convulsion has reared its ugly head to turn the world of politics upside down.

That’s right, we are in the autumn of 1992, in the aftermath of ‘Black Wednesday’. The pound has crashed out of the European exchange rate mechanism, despite the Government imposing sky-high interest rates in a bid to hold it steady against the Deutschmark – a policy that has inflicted great damage on exporters and mortgage-holders alike.

Many families have been left in negative equity and cannot afford their monthly repayments. Thousands of businesses cannot service their loans and have gone to the wall. Unsurprisingly, the Tory poll rating has tanked.

And that, of course, is where the parallels with the present day break down.

Comparing polling around the time of Black Wednesday with today (with thanks to the political strategist Mark Pack for compiling spreadsheets of historic polling) throws up some fascinating clues as to why the Conservatives are still presently ahead in the polls.

In 1992, the election of John Smith as Labour leader resulted in the party having a modest bounce in the polls, giving it a small late-summer lead over the Tories of around four points. By early September polling was nip and tuck again. But a poll taken on Black Wednesday and the next day showed Labour with an eight-point lead. A month further down the line, in mid-October, Labour was around 20 points ahead, with the Tory rating slumping into the low 30s.

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