Guardian Article Details NDN Collaboration With UK Labour Party on Econ Issues

A new article by Patrick Wintour in the British newspaper, The Guardian, examines the impact NDN and Rob Shapiro's economic analysis has had on thinking in the UK:

Labour is set to draw on what is described as "the most important chart in American politics" to claim that long-term stagnation of living standards in the UK, as opposed to low growth, may be the dominant issue facing the country at the next election.

Labour is drawing on research by the New Democrat Network (NDN) central to the Obama re-election campaign to shape its own election thinking.

The research was described by the Obama campaign as its North Star. It tracked three trends in the US economy between 1992 and 2009, showing how two – higher growth and higher productivity – had not been matched by a rise in living standards for the majority.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank, the leading voice on UK living standards, will next week produce its own State of the Nation report showing how long it will take to return to rising living standards in the UK even if growth returns. Labour will also launch its own exercise – "the condition of Britain" – next week, its policy review chief, Jon Cruddas, has revealed.

The analysis suggests Labour cannot respond simply with a promise to stoke demand, since growth alone will not address the issue of rising inequality and stagnant living standards for the majority.

It also indicates that the crisis of living standards predates the City-induced recession of 2008.

"The reason this is happening is because of rising global competition, the defining new economic challenge of our time," Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Democrat Network, said in a recent interview.

"In the actual experience of the American economy, there has become an enormous gap between the upper one-third and everyone else."

The chart hung in the Obama campaign office, along with a caption derived from a focus group participant: "I'm working harder and falling behind." That same line was repeated by the president in a campaign stump speech.

Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary and a close student of US politics, told the Guardian: "Back in 1992 the famous dictum of Bill Clinton's adviser James Carville was: 'It's the economy, stupid.' It contained the implicit assumption that economic growth ensured rising living standards.

"Today that no longer can be taken for granted, as this important research by NDN and the Resolution Foundation shows. I've worked closely with the NDN in recent years and that collaboration confirms to me this is one of the defining challenges for today's progressives on both sides of the Atlantic."

Visit here to learn more this analysis, and the "most important chart in American politics.  And if you are in DC on Monday please drop by our event where Dr. Shapiro will be unvieling new some new research on the economics of this new age of globalization.