Elections pick losers, not winners. Cameron deserves to lose

Voters tend to identify the failures of governments rather than the potential of the opposition - and the failures of austerity have been plain to see

It has been my impression over the years that in the United Kingdom - still united at the time of writing - governments tend to lose elections rather than oppositions winning them. And if ever a government deserved to lose an election, it is this one.

Memories of prewar unemployment and the social insensitivity of the Tories were enough to drive Churchill out in 1945. But in 1951, having achieved much in a period when austerity was necessary and not a political stratagem, the Attlee government was tired and it was "time for a change".

Austerity was meant to revive the animal spirits of business, but in fact did the reverse, as the Keynesians feared