Balcony Politicians

Osborne and Cameron in economic crisis mode

It has been a strange week with Western economies flirting with economic meltdown yet again.  Watching our politicians cavort on the world stage is not a pretty sight with David Cameron and George Osborne both preferring to sit in the gods as if Statler and Waldorf - heckling their European partners in the financial crisis rather than making any serious attempt to become part of the solution.

Cameron signed a round-robin letter to President Sarkozy urging the eurozone countries to act swiftly.  We might expect this sort of open letter to be sent by an 'angry resident of Tunbridge Wells' but not the Prime Minister. He has relegated himself to one of the crowd, not one of the players in Europe, which will no doubt satisfy the anglophiles in the party.

George Osborne said the Europeans had made no progress in saving the euro over the past six weeks and needed a fund of at least €400bn to safeguard the euro. He added that the UK was ahead of the curve and had credibility, moreover, he had no intention of changing his policies.  Britain's problem as we are frequently told by the coalition was all the fault of Gordon Brown who created the mess in the first place, but as I recall he was instrumental in bringing the G20 together in London to agree on policies to rescue the banks and diminish the recession. It is finding solutions that matter not stoking a culture of blame.

We could do with some truth about the economy, not another bout of being 'economic with the truth' from our two leading politicians.  But then I am perhaps making the fundamental mistake of believing that our politicians are leaders when they have never served an apprenticeship as managers let alone leaders in any form of business. They seem to act as if running the country is just another jape.

This sort of disassembling and disavowing responsibility destroys any trust I had in the coalition's ability to make progress on the economy.  I had understood Osborne's obduracy about the need to reduce the deficit but his obsession with slashing public expenditure was always going to damage the economy. He should remember that obdurate politicians over the past thirty years such as Thatcher, Scargill,  Rumsfeld, and Brown have eventually suffered demeaning exits.

We should also observe that the IMF has proved on dozens of occasions that forcing fragile economies from Argentina to Iraq and most of Central America to swallow tough monetary policies and forcing them to sell off public assets to the multinational bottom feeders like Haliburton merely wrecks their economies and causes massive long term unemployment and poverty.

So, if all the problems are in the eurozone and the UK has credibility in the financial markets according to Osborne, what are we to make of the following stories that have emerged in the press this week?

• a fall of 5.6% in the equity markets, the largest drop since March 2009 during the depths of the recession
• Unemployment was up last month by 80,000, the largest rise for 2 years taking unemployment to 2.51m
• Youth unemployment up to 973,000 - a million by Christmas?
• a drop in sports participation in the UK of 7% this year as people can no longer afford to use private facilities and local authorities close sports centres and swimming pools and increase charges. Much of the lottery money has been diverted into the Olympic facilities, which will be London's legacy but the rest of the country has paid for it by losing support for local sports organisations and facilities.  
• Our monthly borrowing has reached record levels of £16.4bn as the tax receipts decrease and higher benefit payments are required as unemployment rises. 
• Strikes are threatened by teachers, police and other public sector workers in response to pensions being delayed and contributions increased.
• the Health Minister, Andrew Lansley, blamed the cost of PFI for NHS funding problems and attributed this to the Labour government.  Yet it was John Major's Tory government that made it clear to Councils, the NHS and other public bodies that the only method to get investments or schools, hospitals or large capital projects was to go down the PFI route. 


The biggest crisis of all is the accelerating inequalities of income, health, education and job opportunities that the government have bestowed on its citizens. True that the income inequalities stemmed from what Thatcher introduced and Major, Blair and Brown implicitly endorsed. This is becoming chronic and more evident every day. When Tesco claim that they will drop prices by £500m or between 15% and 50% on popular items you know we are in deep shit.

Pretending that our problems stem from the collapse of the eurozone or the legacy of Gordon Brown won't wash for very long, so grow up boys and start acting as if you could make a difference, this is not the Bullingdon club.