UK News
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from The Great Debate:
Should Obama mimic David Cameron’s austerity?
By Nicholas Wapshott
The opinions expressed are his own.
In medieval times, a key member of a monarch’s retinue was the food taster, a hapless fellow who ate what his master was about to eat. If the taster survived, the food was deemed safe for the king’s consumption. President Obama has a taster of sorts in David Cameron, the British prime minister, who has embarked upon an economic experiment that echoes the recipe of wholesale public spending cuts and tax hikes needed if both sides in Congress are to agree to raising the federal government debt ceiling. How the British economy is faring offers Obama an idea of what a similarly radical policy of cutting and taxing here would mean to the American economy.
Cameron’s election in May 2010 coincided with the start of the Greek debt crisis. The Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned him that the public debt in the UK was so large that Britain, too, might see its lending become impossibly expensive, so Cameron decided that there was no time to lose in putting the fiscal books in order. He decided to slash public spending by 25 per cent over four years and immediately raise value added tax on goods and services from 17.5 to 20 per cent. Such a radical remedy found favor with the rump of British Conservatives who felt that Margaret Thatcher’s free-market, small government, “sound money” policies of the Eighties had not been pressed to their limit. In turn, Thatcher’s prescription to reduce the size of the state derived from her favorite thinker Friedrich Hayek, the author of “The Road to Serfdom,” who believed like many Tea Party supporters that government intervention inevitably leads to tyranny.
Cameron’s experiment in applying a radical cure to the British economy caught the attention of a number of conservatives here, among them George W. Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson, who wrote in the Washington Post, “If Cameron’s approach works -- dramatically cutting deficits without stalling economic growth -- it will be an obvious, powerful example for America.” “If only the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress had been so courageous. Instead, they are choosing to put off these big decisions,” moaned Matthew Bishop, New York bureau chief of the Economist, in a piece co-authored with Michael Green in the Wall Street Journal. Even Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner thought the British experiment worth trying. “I am very impressed, as one man’s view looking from a distance, at the basic strategy [Cameron] has adopted,” Geithner told the BBC.
So, how is the British economy doing? Under Cameron’s Labour predecessor, Gordon Brown, Britain fell into depression, with the economy shrinking during the worldwide banking meltdown to minus 2.1 per cent in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. By the time of the general election in May 2010, however, growth had slowly climbed to 1.1 per cent per quarter. With Cameron taking the reins and announcing his radical economic plan, the economy slumped back to minus 0.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, before returning to growth of 0.5 per cent in the first quarter of this. But the latest economic growth figures, released this week, show a slowdown in economic activity, to a miserable 0.2 per cent growth between April and June. Cameron’s chancellor George Osborne has blamed the poor figure on widespread partying that accompanied the wedding of Prince William and the effects of the Japanese tsunami. The double-dip recession that Cameron’s critics predicted has not yet taken place, but the figures are clearly headed in the wrong direction.
from The Great Debate:
Ireland could use a little audacity of hope
By Marian Harkin
The opinions expressed are her own.
Barack Obama's infectious hope will help replenish the spirits of the beleaguered Irish people as we strive to emerge from recession, but more significantly his invoking our small nation's educational and entrepreneurial talents help to show us the way forward.
A once-in-a-generation economic crisis might seem like an odd time for Ireland to issue back-to-back invitations to Queen Elizabeth II and U.S. President Obama, but as the sun shone through the rain cloud, illuminating the President as he visited his ancestral home in Moneygall Co. Offaly, it seemed a masterstroke, for it is precisely an injection of Obama-esque audacious hope and “yes we can” positivity that Ireland needs to kickstart our long road to recovery.
Best friends in the whole world, at least for now
Prime Minister David Cameron has spent the last few days playing down expectations of just how special Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States is.
He was afraid of being seen, like Tony Blair, as another American “poodle”, well aware that some aspects of the alliance have not played out in Britain’s best interest and also worried that the UK has to concentrate on forming strong ties beyond the U.S. to maintain international influence.
from Mark Jones:
A Google election?
The return to work on Monday prompted the launch of the main UK political parties' pre-election campaigns and the indications are that social media is likely to play a big role in the run-up to the general election.
David Cameron kicked off the Conservatives' Draft Health Manifesto with a very neat 'ask Cameron' feature making use of Google Moderator -- something I'd not heard of before but previously used by Conservative MP Giles Chichester in the runup to the Copenhagen climate summit.
Do you love the NHS?
The National Health Service (NHS) has endured a barrage of criticism from opponents of Barack Obama’s plans to push through a healthcare bill that would rein in costs, place constraints on insurance companies and expand health cover to 46 million uninsured Americans.
Stateside critics of the U.S. President’s plans — including former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — have branded the NHS “evil and Orwellian” and said it allowed “death panels” to decide levels of care for the elderly. They see it as an overly bureaucratic, “socialised” system of healthcare and the proposals have prompted angry scenes at town halls across America.
Time for the people to decide on Britain’s democratic future?
Britain’s embattled political class are falling over themselves to modernise parliament, but given we have fully embraced the Internet age the proposals have a rather tame feel about them.
Gordon Brown’s latest proposals for “democratic renewal” — the reform of MPs expenses and an elected House of Lords to name but two — could hardly be described as Parliament 2.0.
Michelle sparkles as hostess Sarah plays it safe
Sarah Brown will have had an anxious early morning.
Her husband’s attempt to be the great fixer of the financial crisis and best friend of the United States at the same time was a big ask, but how was she going to handle the visit of Michelle Obama?
This was the first time Sarah had been called upon to host her new opposite number from The White House. And it wasn’t all smiling outside Downing Street either – the pair had to visit a cancer care centre as well and – horrors – meet Her Majesty the Queen.
from MacroScope:
Brown gets helping hand from Obama
He loves the Queen and the British people. Truth be told, President Obama was always going to be a hit on his first overseas trip.
But Gordon Brown probably could not believe his luck. The prime minister just could not stop grinning as he stood next to the new president at a news conference in the Foreign Office ahead of the G20 summit.
Brown flatters, but are we still best of friends, papers ask
“Brave” was how most of the British press responded to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech to both houses of Congress in Washington.
Brown was the first European leader to be invited to Washington by the new U.S. administration and was only the fifth British prime minister to speak to a joint session of Congress.
Tennis anyone? Brown’s audience with Obama
After all the angst, the special relationship is alive and well. For Gordon Brown, it must feel like job done, to a certain degree.
Before his trip to Washington, there was endless speculation about whether or not the new president really cared about the so-called special relationship between the two countries.
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The Wall
