The Conservative-led government is pinning much hope of re-election on a ‘feelgood factor’ returning once the temporary pain of the current round of cuts have been felt. In fact, shortly before Christmas David Cameron launched his ‘Wellbeing Index’ – a measure of the nation’s happiness to sit alongside the measure of the nation’s wealth, GDP.

Regardless of whether or not this is part of their re-election strategy, this attempt to measure wellbeing has to be a move in the right direction if we believe that politics is about making people’s lives better. GDP has always been used as a rough proxy for happiness, but there’s increasing evidence that this is indeed a very rough proxy. While GDP has consistently increased since the second world war, individual happiness and personal wellbeing does not seem to have mirrored that. Researchers believe that this is for two reasons: Firstly, because the effect of increased wealth is short-lived. People become used to a particular income level very quickly and from that point it’s the difference between you and others that becomes more important. This creates a constant competition to do better and to never be satisfied – a quality fuelled by the advertising industry but which will ultimately not be satisfied for the majority of people. Secondly, there’s more to happiness than money. Once you have a roof over your head and food on the table it’s our relationships, sense of community, mental health and general outlook that are the biggest contributors to wellbeing.

For policy areas like the environment, this opens up huge opportunities. Post-war western levels of consumption have created most of the environmental problems we face. If consumption isn’t making us happier (which appears to be the case), then it is possible to decouple wellbeing from environmental degradation and possibly even develop policies that tackle climate change and improve the quality of people’s lives. For instance, transport is a huge contributor to carbon emissions, yet time spent commuting is often reported to be the most miserable part of people’s days. Policies that encourage people to commute less could reduce our carbon emissions as effectively as those demanding we take fewer holidays, but actually improve the quality of people’s lives.

Pursuing policies to enhance wellbeing will, of course, be difficult for any political party. On the one hand it requires a preference for policies that deliver wellbeing rather than GDP, but on the other hand our place in the world depends upon GDP. Western Europe’s current economic model relies upon a mobile and flexible workforce and although this encourages people to move away from family and friends (important factors in wellbeing), little reduces wellbeing quite as dramatically as unemployment. And mental health, the single biggest misery-creating factor in the UK, has been the poor relation of the health service under successive governments of whatever complexion.

But for the Conservatives in particular, these economic and policy problems are combined with two more thorny issues. Firstly, there’s the presentational matter of how kindly the voters will take to a cabinet of millionaires telling us that ‘money can’t buy you love’.

But even if money can buy the cabinet a thick enough skin to pursue that line, there’s a second, more fundamental problem for them. Because as well as the external factors relating to jobs, health, community and family that are important for wellbeing, there are other ‘internal’ factors that are equally important and which government and public life in general has an impact upon too. Specifically, people who want to trust others, who are generous spirited and generally more positive about the future are those who experience a greater sense of wellbeing. The problem for the coalition is that public support for their savage cuts depends upon them encouraging the opposite of those feelings. Focusing on ‘benefit scroungers’ and creating back-to-work schemes centred around visible and humiliating tasks allows you to cut benefits, but is hardly encouraging citizens to trust one another; generating outrage over a handful of shocking housing benefit claims gives you permission to drive vulnerable families out of their homes but does not encourage anyone to show generosity of spirit to those worse off than themselves; and highlighting the discrepancy between public and private sector pensions might give you an opportunity to level down provision to the lowest common denominator, but it does nothing to encourage a sense of security and hope and optimism for the future.

Of course, the prescription for wellbeing does not simply ask for a blank cheque. Indeed, most experts in this area suggest that it needs a thoughtful focus on how we can remove the causes of misery rather than a series of expensive policies to try to increase happiness. But, regardless of the policies that are put in place, improving our collective wellbeing also requires a political discourse that is optimistic, trusting and generous. It is difficult to see how the government’s current framing of issues, encouraging voters to be as begrudging of their fellow citizens as possible, can play a part in this.

Alison McGovern MP has also written about the government’s plans to measure wellbeing

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