George Osborne "stands ready" to help Ireland in the midst of economic crisis. It's the least he can do after cheerleading their disastrous economic policies as a "shining example".
George Osborne “stands ready” to help Ireland in the midst of economic crisis. It’s the least he can do after cheerleading their disastrous economic policies.
Reuters today quotes George Osborne ahead of an EU finance ministers meeting:
“We’re going to do what is in Britain’s national interest. Ireland is our closest neighbour and it’s in Britain’s national interest that the Irish economy is successful and we have a stable banking system…”
“So Britain stands ready to support Ireland in the steps that it needs to take to bring about that stability.”
But in 2006, George Osborne wrote in The Times:
A generation ago, the very idea that a British politician would go to Ireland to see how to run an economy would have been laughable… Today things are different. Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking, and that is why I am in Dublin: to listen and to learn.
The British Chancellor went on to lecture that:
“In Britain, the Left have us stuck debating a false choice. They suggest you have to choose between lower taxes and public services. Yet in Ireland they have doubled spending on public services in the past decade while reducing taxes and shrinking the State’s share of national income. So not only does Ireland now have lower business and income taxes than the UK, there are also twice as many hospital beds per head of population.”
The story now is rather different as Irish unemployment stands at 13.9 per cent while GDP contracted again in the second quarter. Tory cheerleaders including politicians, think tanks, and bloggers praised the Irish decision to reject a stimulus package similar to the policies of Alistair Darling and Barack Obama. They went on to praise Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s austerity budget a year ago. Now they say it would all be fine if it wasn’t for the euro or bank bailout. Yet even before the bank bail out, the cuts weren’t working as growth plummeted and the deficit remained stubbornly in double digits.
George Osborne wants to help Ireland in the “steps that it needs to take to bring about that stability.” But with his track record can we trust him to make the right judgment on what those steps might be?
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16 Responses to “Osborne to help Ireland: a “shining example of long-term economic policymaking””
Anon E Mouse
Henry – So you are saying that Alan Johnson (who I think may have made Labour electable after Brown, Miliband won’t) could have predicted the recession any more than anyone?
The fact is that the current chancellor has been proven right so far on the important current financial events. There has been no double dip recession, unemployment is down and the country’s credit rating has held up.
Have you ever considered how good the coalition will look in five years with the economy turned round and a lot of the deficit cleared?
The Lib Dems have already started on their no tax for up to £10K earnings – something that won’t affect the average Labour voter it appears but after the shock of redundancy followed by self employment then the recession I for one welcome it.
Certainly it is preferable to the last government where the 10p tax was removed (cruel) and they wanted to put up NI.
Snipe and bicker from the sidelines but Labour doesn’t deserve to govern this country after the way it punished the poor and sucked up to big business…
Henry
I’m just saying that Osborne made a fool of himself praising the Irish economy in 2006. The Irish government are his ideological soulmates – & now he’s apparently thinking of giving his chums there £7 billion of our money after they completely messed up their economy.
I don’t want to panic you, but…… « The murmurings of Barry Kirby
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[…] was once held up by George Osborne as a “shining example of the art of the possible in economic policy making”. Let’s hope he doesn’t still believe that. Evidence suggests he […]