...it is the economy (stupid), or at least the political economy.

James Graham comes out for Clegg today in his piece at Comment is Free, Ich bin ein Clegghead:

Lesson one from the latest (and hopefully last for a good long while) Liberal Democrat leadership contest is that everything I thought I knew about the candidates was wrong. Chris "master strategist" Huhne has ended up making some appalling tactical blunders, while Nick "great communicator" Clegg, it emerges, can be a bit rubbish on the telly. They both have feet of clay. Despite this, I remain as sure as I was a month ago that both are better potential leaders than either of their two predecessors.

Leaving aside the superficial similarities, what emerges are two very different personalities coming at this campaign at a very different point in their lives and focusing on very different priorities. Huhne invokes Bill Clinton when he states that it's the economy (stupid); Clegg talks about how the economy-focused politics of the 1970s and 80s are now long dead and buried. Huhne talks about devolution, of bringing government closer to people; Clegg talks about empowerment, of giving people more direct control over the public services they use.

It's not his choice I particularly object to, though I disagree with him on that too naturally, but one particular part of the assessment he goes through to arrive at that choice. It's mentioned twice, one of them in the part of his article I quote above, that "the economy-focused politics of the 1970s and 80s are now long dead and buried". This leads to the conclusion, later, that whilst Nick "isn't an economist and notwithstanding his observation that the political debate has largely moved on from such matters" he could "wing it" if he is "surrounded [by] people who can talk with authority on the subject."

See personally I don't think that the focus on the economy in politics should be dead. As I've argued before, I do think the "cosy consensus" between Labour and Tory makes it appear that way - that we are in an era of managerial politics, but that the job of liberals is to put it back on the agenda. Or at least, and it is different, to revive the study and promotion of "political economy". For too long now "economics", the pseudo-science that divorced itself from "political economy" in the nineteenth century, has sought to position itself as a set of inviolable laws, as if they are to society what Newtonian laws are to the universe. That economics somehow trumps politics, is master of the system rather than just a part of the system of how people and resources get on together.

Only a certain amount of politics deals with how things currently are, which is necessarily bound by the parameters of the contemporary economic orthodoxy, because that's how economists tell us the world, markets, property, wealth accumulation and so on works, and that it's inviolable. But the real visionaries are those who can subjugate economics to political principles, who can see ways to change the contemporary orthodoxy to achieve real political priorities. And, whilst I have a healthy skepticism of "schooled" economists, educated with that orthodoxy ingrained into them such that few of them ever dare to challenge it, I believe what we do need is an economist first who can think out of the box, instinctively and be able to defend an unorthodox economic idea spontaneously and with authority.

I think that's what Chris means when he says, as quoted by John Abrams at Liberal Revolution when he asks "Is Chris pitching for the Shadow Chancellors job?"

`Well I think we all have our strong suits, I’m simply saying that my strong suit, clearly having been in those areas is being able to take Gordon Brown on on the Economy, which is going to be dominant issue as Bill Clinton said.`

And I think he's right. Which is why, whatever I may disagree with in the way he has promoted himself as a staunch defender of public provision of public services, I will still be voting for the economist. He may not be as radical as I would like, but neither of them are, but I really think the one with the greater potential for radicalism is the one who stands a chance of understanding how changing the economic rules can feed through into great social change for the better.