Compare and contrast
I used to hate ‘A’ level questions that started “Compare and contrast……..” but perhaps they had their uses.
15 or so years ago I was standing in Dublin reporting on the fact that the Irish government was denying that it needed international help to stop its banking system and economy from imploding. I said that the government was obviously being made an offer it could not refuse.
Not like in The Godfather with a horses head in your bed but much more like the housekeeper in Father Ted with a huge plate of sandwiches. “Go on, go on, go on, go on, you know you need some. Go on, go on, go on.”
In the end I was right and the Irish government took the money on offer.
Well, 15 years on, it has a budget surplus of €8.6 billion a year. It is torn about whether to save it all for pension commitments, climate change costs and future proofing the government or to spend it on infrastructure and other investment which the economy will need to grow further. It is, quite frankly, one of those problems that we could all do with.
Compare and contrast with the UK government’s problems.
Not just huge deficits, but hidden ones too and endless areas which the previous government has deliberately allowed to fall into decay and disarray and which need huge amounts of long and short term spending.
Prisons, health, justice, defence, social care and all the rest, and an ageing population. The pressures on the UK economy are massive, and need sustained, long term structural reforms; yet without a political consensus on what needs doing and the urgency of doing it.
Yet the Tory party is not just hors de combat it is off playing with the fairies and will remain so when one of the third raters running for its leadership actually takes over.
The country cannot wait to see if the Tory party can get its act back together and recover its common sense. Not least because deep down Tories know how bad things are, they just want Labour to pay the price for trying to fix it all.
And even if they do, the chance of becoming anything like our close neighbours Ireland is a pipe dream.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
My favourite UK "compare and contrast" is with what the Norway Government has done with their North Sea oil and gas revenues.
Finding out what Norway did with its revenues is a relatively straight forward task. Just Google, "What did Norway do with its oil and gas revenues?".
At the top of the list is, "Government revenues from petroleum activities are transferred to the Government Pension Fund Global, which at the end of 2023 had holdings with a total value of around NOK 15 800 billion."
A quick reference to Oanda indicates that it amounts to about £1,133,454,080,000.00.
Now Google, "What did the UK do with its oil and gas revenues?"
Jonty: as a thought experiment …. Had the Uk remained in the EU post 2016, would the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget frolic been possible?