Maybe the Brits should spend another two or three years investigating Partygate to get to the root cause of all problems there. Let's see if that helps.
Excuse me, I was under the impression the U.K. “austerity programme” ran from 2010 to 2019 and was again put in place in 2021, and cut everything from welfare to school building. I must be mistaken for the “other U.K.” Not.
You missed the bit where government debt yields increased violently when the market decided the state was borrowing too much money.
Like I said, the UK put themselves on this path and the way will be “rough and steep” as they say. Lots and lots of challenges in the U.K. and not very many options due to some near sighted ideological decisions.
Your position is that the state should spend more money but when they announce expenditure the debt market collapses.
No. My position is the conservatives chose a path of poverty over a decade ago in the U.K. with the idea they could cut their way out of trouble. You are experiencing the ramifications of austerity now one of which is the U.K. debt has limited demand because the country is in decline from austerity. It really is a difficult concept for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to grasp.
The U.K. has done better than other European countries. They talked austerity and civil servants declined from 500,000 to 380,000 and have now gone past 500,000.
No doubt but is it growing as the U.K. should? We can go back and forth like this but the outlook for the U.K. is one of decline. My position is and has been this is due to an austerity approach to a budget crunch. You may think something else. I get it. Trust me, I’m in America, I know the conservative line of thinking on this. As to civil servants, ok, when was the 500k first achieved? 2009? If so think about that. That’s 15 years of lost growth. Did demand for services decline? Perhaps a lose in population?
Conservatives in the uk are social democrats to the left of labour on immigration and welfare. The bond market will not accept increased public spending without a violent increase in rates that will cause homelessness.