If the autumn statement got a bad press does that mean it was good?

The usual rule with Budgets is that those immediately lauded by the media turn out to be disasters, writes John Rentoul

Should we compare it to Geoffrey Howe’s Budget in 1981? (REUTERS)

Is the quality of a Budget in inverse proportion to its initial reception by the media? Professor Philip Cowley, a political scientist at Queen Mary University, said today: “The usual rule with Budgets is that those immediately lauded by the media turn out to be disasters. On that basis, and having seen today’s headlines, yesterday was pure genius.”

He clarified that this was “sort of a joke, and sort of not”. But as he is one of the few academics to have a Law named after him, we should take him seriously. Admittedly, Cowley’s Law has nothing to do with Budgets. It holds: “There is an inverse relationship between the importance of any election campaign technique and the amount of media coverage devoted to it.”

I think it dates from the time when direct mail was the Big Thing in campaigning – individually addressed letters to target voters tailored by computer to their demographics or canvassing returns. Anyway, not such a Big Thing any more, thereby proving Cowley’s Law.