UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
from Anatole Kaletsky:
Even Britain has now abandoned austerity
The Age of Austerity is over. This is not a prediction, but a simple statement of fact. No serious policymaker anywhere in the world is trying to reduce deficits or debt any longer, and all major central banks are happy to finance more government borrowing with printed money. After Japan’s election of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the undeclared budgetary ceasefire in Washington that followed President Obama’s victory last year, there were just two significant hold-outs against this trend: Britain and the euro-zone. Now, the fiscal “Austerians” and “sado-monetarists” in both these economies have surrendered, albeit for very different reasons.
Much attention has been focused this week on the chaos in Cyprus. Coming after the Italian election and subsequent easing of Italy’s fiscal conditions, the overriding necessity to keep Cyprus within the euro -- and its military bases and gas supplies outside Russian control -- will almost surely mean another retreat by Germany and the European Central Bank from their excessive austerity demands. But an even more remarkable shift has occurred in Britain. The Cameron government, which embraced fiscal austerity as its main raison d’etre, was suddenly converted to the joys of debt and borrowing in this week’s budget.
Of course, the rhetoric of British Chancellor George Osborne’s budget speech gave no hint of his Damascene conversion. On the contrary, it ridiculed “people who seem to think that the way to borrow less is to borrow more.” But Osborne’s trademark sneers could not disguise the meaning of the policies and numbers he presented.
Long after the U.S., Japanese, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and most European governments, Britain has finally been forced to accept Keynes’s “paradox of thrift”: A government that tries to reduce its borrowing during a recession generally weakens the economy so much that it ends up increasing its total debt. Conversely, a government that expands deficits during periods of weak economic activity, or finds ways to encourage private borrowing and discourage private saving, usually ends up lightening the national debt burden.
What did you think of the 2011 budget?
George Osborne has delivered his budget speech for the 2011/12 fiscal year to parliament.
The Chancellor said corporation tax would be cut by two percentage points to 26 percent from April, rather than by just the one point originally planned. A levy on banks would be increased to help pay for it.
Is there a Plan B for the government?
Our Reuters/Ipsos MORI poll is likely to make cheery reading for Britain’s Labour party.
For the first time since January 2008, they are level pegging with the Conservatives in terms of popular support; for the first time since May’s general election, more people are dissatisfied with the government than are pleased with it, and – perhaps most heartening of all for the opposition – three-quarters of the public would rather see slower public spending cuts than swift ones. And all that without Labour even having a leader.
from The Great Debate UK:
VAT rise – is it really that bad?
Rachel Mason is public relations manager at Fair Investment Company. The opinions expressed are her own.-
So the new coalition government is putting VAT up from 17.5 percent to 20 percent on January 4 2011 and the country is up in arms, but is it really that bad?
from The Great Debate UK:
Entrepreneurs needed if the UK is going to make up the deficit
-Joe White is managing director of Moonfruit.com. The opinions expressed are his own. Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as UK Chancellor George Osborne makes an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-
The first Tory budget is a critical one. The Treasury and Chancellor George Osborne have been dropping hints for weeks about a big slash in public sector spending in an effort to try and prepare Whitehall for the worst, and to rally the private sector to step in and fill the deficit.
from The Great Debate UK:
Taxes and the emergency budget
-Julia Whittle is head of International at Punter Southall Financial Management. The opinions expressed are her own. Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as UK Chancellor George Osborne makes an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-
It is highly unlikely previous Capital Gains Tax proposals will be reversed in Chancellor George Osborne's first budget.
from The Great Debate UK:
A budget of woes? Where has our imagination gone?
-Ruth Porter is communications manager at the Institute of Economic Affairs. The opinions expressed are her own. Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as Chancellor George Osborne makes an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-
George Osborne has the chance to do something really radical on Tuesday in his budget statement.
This may hurt a little
Britons are being prepared for the hardest of hard times. Prime Minister David Cameron has warned the public that they will feel the impact of deficit-cutting decisions for years and maybe even decades. Cameron justifies the pain by saying that doing nothing about debt would be disastrous and that Britain will come out of the other side as a stronger country.
His finance minister George Osborne and LibDem sidekick Danny Alexander were setting out plans on Tuesday for how to conduct this year’s spending review, with unions, the public and the private sector asked to contribute ideas.
George Osborne takes risk with rhetoric
George Osborne once said he spends more time thinking about politics than he does about economics.
Now that he’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, he probably needs to think about the latter a bit more.
New politics? Looks like more of the same to me
When I interviewed David Cameron earlier this year after an event at Thomson Reuters in which he, George Osborne and Ken Clarke delivered their views on the economy under a “Vote For Change” banner, I suggested that watching three white, middle-aged men talking about what was good for Britain didn’t feel much like change to me. Cameron jokingly replied that Clarke, 69, would be flattered to be described as middle-aged.
The Conservative leader then shifted in his seat, sat up straight and talked seriously about all the hard work his party was doing to field more female and ethnic minority candidates. His new Deputy Prime Minister, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, talks repeatedly of a “new politics” and how this time politicians will do things differently.
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The Wall
