A curious thing happens in the days before a US election. Like adverts on a dodgy stream of that football match that isn’t on the telly, UK commentators suddenly pop up everywhere pontificating with absurd and usually completely unjustified confidence predictions about how Maricopa County is key to the Democrats taking Arizona and why, without Pennsylvania, Donald Trump doesn’t have a path to winning the electoral college. 

Well, I’m going to hold my hands up. I’m no expert. I’d never heard of Ann Selzer before the weekend, as was the case I suspect with most of the British commentators who suddenly jumped on her, as it turned out, comically incorrect poll predicting a victory for Kamala Harris in Iowa. The supposed three point lead that Harris had in the state was actually a whopping 14 point lead for Trump.

The fascination with US elections is understandable. We share a language, meaning we can follow them in a way we can’t with, say, a French election. And with the U.S. being the richest, most powerful country in the world, who they elect genuinely matters.

the US election … really, genuinely, undeniably was about the economy, stupid

But beyond mere interest, this election offers a lesson for British politics, particularly in what it says about incumbent governments. For all the talk about Trump’s personality and character, the potential threats to American institutions, and the growing salience of issues such as abortion, if there is one thing we do know for certain about the US election is that it really, genuinely, undeniably was about the economy, stupid.

The fact that Trump made gains, often significant gains, in almost every county of every state, every age group, every ethnic group and every other demographic you could think of, is indicative of this.The Trump campaign placed the Biden-Harris administration’s failed economic record at the centre of its messaging, but looking around the world and indeed looking at home, this approach was far from unique.

This is something that Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and effectively Starmer’s number two, picked up on in his broadcast round on Thursday morning. When asked for his analysis about the US election, McFadden drew on his own experience as part of the project to “change” the Labour party post-2019 and ultimately win power. As he put it “we had a real focus on living standards and how people felt, and the question ‘are you better off than you were four years ago’… was actually one that we posed during the election.” 

That relentless focus on what Labour dubbed a “Tory cost of living crisis” and  “Tory tax rises” certainly delivered a decisive victory. And while Conservatives may not want to hear this, the Labour opposition arguably had a more sophisticated and holistic understanding of what a cost of living crisis feels like than the Sunak government.

Labour recognised that actually it wasn’t just in payslips where people felt the impact

Whereas Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt twice pulled the lever of tax cuts on pay slips through the two 2p cuts on national insurance and waited for gratitude that never arrived, Labour recognised that actually it wasn’t just in payslips where people felt the impact. It was mortgage costs driven by higher interest rates, rental costs due to the failure to build, inflation driven by the covid spending binge and more, all compounded by the perception of significant government waste and failing public services. Most barely noticed the national insurance cuts.

What the US election has also proved, though, is how quickly reputations can be transformed if your time in office makes people feel poorer. Trump left the White House in disgrace in January 2021. Yet come November 2024 Americans are feeling much poorer, and are putting him back into the Oval Office with a whopping mandate.

This should send shivers down the spine of Labour strategists, because that understanding of what was driving the Tory cost of living crisis has already been lost. Their one time soulmates in the Office for Budget Responsibility are now forecasting that Labour’s high-tax, high-spend, high-borrowing budget will lead to a record tax burden, an increase in interest rates and inflation, and a slowdown of growth. Reeves is finding comfort in telling the British public that she isn’t raising taxes on pay slips. But this is the same shallow comfort of the last government.  While taxes on pay slips aren’t going up (yet), taxes on alcohol, flights, hiring, pay rises, wealth and inheritance are. So will interest rates and inflation if the OBR are correct. Reeves herself has now had to admit that pay rises will be smaller than they would have been. 

This Labour government is about to make the British people feel much worse off while patronising them about a penny off the pint. They hope that by pumping money into the unproductive, inefficient public sector, this will somehow trickle down to the rest of us. Instead, Reevesonomics might just suffer the same fate as Bidenomics — a resounding rejection from a population tired of watching their taxes go up and their wallets shrink.