“……Trying to predict 2013 by peering through the miasma, the big question on my mind is: Can Britain’s coalition government survive? By all rights it shouldn’t.
In the most recent Yougov survey, less than a third of Britons said they support the coalition. Fifty-nine percent oppose it. The combined poll ratings of its two parties, the Conservatives and their junior partner Liberal Democrats, don’t equal those of the opposition Labour Party.
It’s easy to understand why the government and its parties are so unpopular. The economy has been hammered everywhere except London and its suburbs by an ideologically driven set of austerity measures that led to a double-dip recession in 2012 and the possibility of a third dip in the first part of next year.
The Bank of England is forecasting a miserable 1 percent growth in GDP this year. Since its prognostications have been overly optimistic every year since the crisis began, however, I predict it will be off again and that growth will be fractional at best.
When matters become that bad economically and politically, grown-ups tend to blame someone else. For Conservatives, that means the EU. Most of the party wants to withdraw from the union. Lib Dems are very pro-Europe. They would also probably like to moderate the austerity cuts.
Irreconcilable differences. So will their marriage fall apart next year?…”
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