Because Americans love Britain, and because we are a presumptuous lot, we often advise the United Kingdom on its foreign policy. And not only the UK, but Europe. Successive US administrations have urged European nations to form a United States of Europe as an answer to the question attributed to Henry Kissinger: ‘Who do I
Because Americans love Britain, and because we are a presumptuous lot, we often advise the United Kingdom on its foreign policy. And not only the UK, but Europe. Successive US administrations have urged European nations to form a United States of Europe as an answer to the question attributed to Henry Kissinger: ‘Who do I
No one can fault the doctors: they are using every tool available to them to save their very ill patient. But they will probably fail in their efforts to save the euro in its current form. And this will be because the regimen they originally prescribed did more harm than good. Economists were almost unanimous
So we are to have a new industrial policy, this one courtesy of the coalition government and, more specifically, George Osborne and Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Transport Secretary. Both are economically literate, professing faith in markets as allocators of resources; but they have found the lure of shaping the economy
He came, he saw and, to the surprise of many in Washington, David Cameron conquered. Those who have been exposed to his personal charm were less surprised. For them, the surprise — perhaps they should have known better than to be surprised —- came from his willingness to resort to evasion. Faced with a specific
It’s a dirty business. When you’re on top, everyone wants something from you; when you’re not, well, as Billie Holiday says, ‘God bless the child that’s got his own.’ It is a business of sharp elbows, few loyalties, and one in which winning is all that matters. That’s how Rod Serling describes the boxing racket
Alistair Darling’s budget forecasts assume that Britain can keep borrowing all it wants for the foreseeable future.We may not be so lucky, says Irwin Stelzer Federico Sturzenegger and Jeromin Zettelmeyer are not exactly household names. They are, respectively, professor at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella, and an adviser to the International Monetary Fund. Some months
Obama’s man in London needs to stop bashing Bush, immerse himself in domestic political discourse, and get out and meet some true Brits, says Irwin Stelzer ‘He is not even a diplomat,’ sniffed BBC News when Louis Susman took up his post as America’s ambassador to the Court of St James. An Obama Chicago crony,
It just might be that out of the shouting at Prime Minister’s Questions, the sallies and charges, a set of sensible fiscal and financial policies is emerging. The leader of the opposition is right: Labour is planning to cut capital spending in half in the next few years. The Prime Minister is also right: the
The next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour’s rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories’ spending cuts and plans for the ‘broken society’ Where is the clear blue water? MPs in both the Labour and the Tory parties have engaged in behaviour that is illegal, or
Irwin Stelzer says the PM should seize the opportunity presented by this stay of execution: plot a path to fiscal sanity, cut red tape and restore Britain’s stature on the world stage Now that Gordon Brown is determined to go down with the Labour ship, or to sink it, if you believe his harshest critics,
The American model of lightly regulated capitalism may be in disrepute, says Irwin Stelzer. But the French President’s ambition is deluded French presidents/emperors are given to delusion. Napoleon thought he could conquer the Russian winter. Charles de Gaulle thought he heard voices anointing him the leader of the Free French, and later deluded himself into
Brown’s golden rules have been exposed as a sham, says Irwin Stelzer, but the Tory response has been feeble. Their target should be the PM’s feathering of Old Labour nests The good news is that Gordon Brown’s golden rules are no more. These rules did not stop the then chancellor from launching a spending binge.
‘I was born for this moment,’ Gordon Brown is said to have told a small group at a recent dinner party. The Prime Minister is too keen a student of history not to have known that he was parroting Winston Churchill’s famous remark on becoming Prime Minister in 1940, ‘I felt… that all my past
Gordon Brown’s critics are confused. For months they have been accusing him of dithering, of timidity, of being unable to make the bold moves that are needed if his government is to get a grip on the unfolding problems in the financial sector and, now, in the economy as a whole. Now that he has
Irwin Stelzer reviews the week in politics There are several ways one might look at Gordon Brown’s leaked plan to send £150 to each of the seven-plus million families receiving child benefit. The first, and kindest, is as an attempt to ease the coming winter’s budget strain on what Sir Brian Bender, permanent secretary at the
In the Republican corner it is to be John Sidney McCain III, white, age 71. In the Democratic corner we have Barack Hussein Obama, black, age 46. No American election battle since the days of Franklin Roosevelt has attracted so much worldwide attention. A recent visitor to North Korea, a nation supposedly hermetically sealed from
Irwin Stelzer admires the Schools Secretary, and so regrets that his admissions policy prevents schools from taking account of a pupil’s prospects of success. Bad news all round Seemingly alone among my acquaintances, I see virtues in Ed Balls. He certainly is not media-friendly, partly because he has the Brownian habit of trying to bury
John Hutton, the energetic Secretary of State for Business and a few other things, has reason to be pleased with the expressions of ‘significant interest’ in constructing new nuclear power plants that he has received from British Energy, EDF Energy, E.ON UK and Iberdrola — the British, French, German and Spanish utilities — respectively. These
Gordon Brown might be overstating his case when he ignores his Thatcherite inheritance and a benign global economic environment, and takes sole credit for Britain’s rather good economic performance during his tenure at No. 11. But, asked whether they are better off now than a decade ago, most Britons would have to agree that in