'Politics cannot save society without the inspiration both of Christian values and of the Christian spirit of forgiveness, of love and of service. To double the standard of living without raising the standard of conduct between peoples would merely be to hasten our decadence. The Christian aim is that both should advance together.' (Viscount Tonypandy)

Many people hope that next month's election will bring change to Britain. Among Western nations we appear to have been hardest hit by the recession and government spending, which accounted for 40 per cent of GDP in 1997, has risen from 44 per cent of GDP just three years ago to 52 per cent today, the largest jump among wealthy nations. Yet, just as many people have had their unrealistically high hopes for President Obama dashed in little more than a year since he came to power in the United States, so too Britain in 2011 or 2015 will still face an overwhelming number of seemingly insoluble social and economic problems. Even the Government forecasts debt to peak at more than 89 per cent of GDP in 2013-2014, while independent analysis suggests the nation’s debt burden including pension obligations and the cost of bailing out big banks is actually 420 percent of GDP, twice the level of Japan, the world’s leading debtor.

What should we realistically expect, then, of our politicians? New York Times columnist David Brooks has written an interesting piece on happiness that perhaps points the way: 'Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives. Most schools and colleges spend too much time preparing students for careers and not enough preparing them to make social decisions. Most governments release a ton of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions. In short, modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones.'

Citing some of the latest research, he also notes how 'The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.'

This should surely affect the kind of questions we want to ask our politicians and that we want our politicians to be asking. It is all too easy, in expecting economic policy to solve all our ills, to make an idol of money. Yet, as Thomas Aquinas observed, 'Political life neither provides our final end nor contains the happiness we seek for ourselves and others. Such happiness ultimately is a state of mind; the purpose of temporal tranquillity, which well-ordered policies establish and maintain, is to give opportunities for contemplating truth.'

May we each vote wisely! After all, as Plato warned, 'The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.'

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