Austerity

On the global scale of hackish irritation, the American left’s persistent determination to misdiagnose the reasons behind Britain’s faltering economy cannot be considered the most grievous pundit-crime. Nevertheless, it remains annoying. Here, for instance, is Joe Klein: Word now comes that Great Britain has slipped back into recession after several years of David Cameron’s austerity experiment. It seems, yet again, that John Maynard Keynes has been proven right. Real Keynesianism–government deficit spending–is essential when economies go bottom up. This can mean more government programs or lower taxes, or a combination of the two. That would seem to be plain vanilla logic, right? But you’d be amazed how many otherwise intelligent people

Summed-up by the Economist in a single chart. When you consider that many people support spending cuts in principle but tend to oppose them when they target particular favourite programmes you may appreciate that the government faces a fairly acute political problem. That’s before you consider the practical difficulties of really cutting spending. In its way, all this is also a bleak testament to the consequences of a dozen years of Labour rule and, one might add, to the Tories’ belated conversion to restraining government spending.

Andrew Sullivan issues it: Obama reminds me of a one-nation Tory, refitted for the austerity era. David Cameron would fit very easily into his cabinet, and vice-versa. I fancy some of this magazine’s readers, to say nothing of less literate parts, headbangers True Believers elsewhere on the Tory right, worry Andrew may be right about this. I’m not so sure. I think Cameron’s instincts are very different from Obama’s but that each has been forced to compromise by unyielding events. If, by some chance, they had been in power 15 years ago I suspect their similarities, such as they are, would have seemed relatively trivial compared to their differences. Nevertheless,

Today’s boxing theme continues: This is excellent. Perhaps someone can do something similar for George Osborne and Ed Balls? The first fight, if you missed it, is here.

Tom Baldwin’s inaugeration as Labour spin guru occasions Tim Montgomerie to appraise Andy Coulson. For many, Coulson has committed the spin doctor’s cardinal sin and become the story, and not just his more voluble opponents on the left. Tim rejects that analysis, but concedes that Coulson may drift to pastures new in 2011. Coulson’s record is quite impressive. He snared the tabloid press, and, together with George Osborne, ended Gordon Brown’s short honeymoon, exposing the Labour leader’s indecision with well-timed tax cut promises. The Election That Never Was spawned a far more enduring theme: Labour’s internal fissures and the timidity of its senior figures. If Coulson goes, that will be his

Alas, poor Hibernia. According to RTE, Brian Cowen Denies Any Bailout Talks. The rest of the world is not so easily fooled, however. These may be “technical” discussions but they’re not discussing the finer points of hurling, are they? Among the more creative solutions to Ireland’s predicament: rejoin sterling. According to Mark Reckless, Tory MP for Rochester: Every MP I have spoken to says they would be happy for Ireland to have a guaranteed seat on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. This would mean that, unlike before 1979, Ireland as a sovereign country would have a proper say in setting sterling interest rates. When we raised the idea

There are precious few heroes in Ireland today and no gods either. But not all the losers are Irish either. Some are Scottish. Chief among them, Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party. Not because an independent Scotland would necessarily have been destroyed by the financial tsunami that swept the globe (though, to put it mildly, it would have been “difficult” to cope and might well have required a humiliating begging-trip to London) but because an independent Scotland would have made some of the same mistakes and unfortunate assumptions that have helped cripple poor Hibernia. Europe, you see, was an important part of the SNP’s slow rise to power. At