Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES
For weeks, the Conservative and Liberal coalition in government has been making the British shiver with warnings that the economy is in so frightful a mess that savage cuts will be necessary in practically every area of public spending. £83 billion was the magic figure for these cuts. Everybody, every budget for entitlements, welfare provisions that make it financially more rewarding to be unemployed than in a job, every special interest was to suffer. Trade-union leaders representing the work force and their benefits have been promising to let none of this through. Why, in France the mere proposal to raise the age of retirement from 60 to 62 has been enough to cause riots and mayhem in 300 towns and cities. British unions are positively itching to show they can do the same.
Well, George Osborne, the man supposed to be wielding the knife as Chancellor of the Exchequer, has spoken, and it turns out that the cuts will return the country’s public spending to the level of 2007. Moreover, by 2014–15, public spending is projected actually to have risen. There are areas of Britain where two-thirds and more of the population is employed by the state, which is close to a sovietized command economy. The National Health Service is the biggest employer in Europe, so sacred a cow that its budget and indeed the whole collective system is beyond the root-and-branch reform it requires. (Rather inspirationally, I originally mistyped this as “rot-and-branch.”) Socialism is a fool-proof agent of general impoverization, and once it has entered the society’s bloodstream, disinfection is practically impossible short of a Gorbachev-type collapse.
A very uncomfortable trade-off is that the defense budget is being cut while foreign aid is actually increasing. The details of the defense cuts seem to be drawn straight from Lewis Carroll. For instance, there are to be two aircraft carriers but no aircraft to put on them. One of the carriers will be moth-balled as soon as it is launched. In future, Britain would be unable to recover the Falkland Islands, or repeat the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The moment seems to have arrived when Britain has accepted that steady decline and political ineptitude have left it a second-rank power.
Such a decline places Britain on the same footing as every European country. The entire continent sees no need to have real means of self-defense, as though no other countries might ever create a genuine security crisis. Iran, Turkey, Russia, could probably invade almost unopposed. Given the feebleness, the money spent on foreign aid openly serves the purpose of buying friends. Recipients of aid, however, are never grateful. Maintaining foreign aid while cutting defense is only glorified appeasement, and it will rightly earn international contempt.
(This post originally appeared at National Review Online)
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Oct '10
Re: Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
I was in the UK last week. It was interesting to watch the BBC commentators go from "stiff upper lip" to "war on the poor" in less than 24 hours of the announcements regarding some of the more "drastic" cuts in entitlements. At least the British managed one official "stiff upper lip" day, unlike the French who filled the streets immediately!
David is right about the public sector being largely immune, and the public sector being so very large. If I recall correctly, about 40% of workers near and in Manchester are public employees. (I cannot imagine what it is they do!)
What a strange hybrid Britain has become: with about half of all workers employed by the public sector, but all the trains and busses privatized. (Of course, the USA is a pretty bizarre hybrid itself, especially when it comes to health care.)
Jul '10
Re: Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
Also interesting but not noted is the buying of U.S. debt by the UK while China divests.
Aug '10
Re: Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
Here are words of warning to US.
"once it has entered the society’s bloodstream, disinfection is practically impossible short of a Gorbachev-type collapse."
So there's the job. Are we up to it ?
Jul '10
Re: Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
Man, this is the kind of red-meat post we used to devour around here.
Have we gotten too lazy commenting on dog-poop posts?
This is truly scary stuff. It shows what happens when socialism pushes a society to - or past - the tipping point; where it becomes a class war between the parasites and a dwindling group of producers.
Note that the Tories are only cutting spending to 2007 levels. In just the past 3 years, Labor shoveled enough money into the maws of unions and benefit-consumers that they're ready to riot over the slightest whiff of economic reality.
This is exactly what Obama and his crew planned to do here: expand the class of government-dependent citizens past the point of no return.
And by the way, was anyone else disgusted that Boehner's "Pledge" only vaguely made reference to kinda, sorta rolling our spending back to 2008 levels? How about 2000, sissy boy.
Edited on Oct 26, 2010 at 5:19pmMay '10
Re: Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
Priceless. I always thought Mark Steyn was exaggerating when he said the UK NHS was the third largest employer in the world. I mean, come on. There are only like 60 million people in the UK. How could that be?
May '10
Re: Uncomfortable Budget Trade-offs in Britain
Quite exasperating for a rather susceptible Chancellor... (hey, Steyn's not here; someone has to inject show tunes).
Hasn't Britain done this before? Seems to me Pitt the Younger had to deal with this in whipping up a mothballed navy to beat Bonaparte. Of course, such a fast-track programme was hugely expensive and they'd have been better off keeping a fleet in being.
The military is the only area of spending that significantly fluctuates over time; the rest just steadily rise. As such, military budgets are a good barometer of national power. We've known for years that Britain punches above its weight, and this is a sign of that.
The difficulty will be, when they need to bulk up in a hurry, will we have the capacity to sell them planes for their carriers? Nobody but the West is cutting back on the military.