Reforming the state

Radical Britain

Britain has embarked on a great gamble. Sooner or later, many other rich-world countries will have to take it too

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Readers' comments



My former contribution was too hypothetical and too strict.
I supply relevant patterns of the passionate endeavoring soul.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In chearful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

（Sonnets Dedicated To Liberty: William Wordsworth）


‘Radical Britain’ is the kind of article that sets me off thinking. I am somewhat reminded of the ‘great organ voice of John Milton (Tennyson)’, the sinewy thighs of J.S.Bach and ‘Economic Fundamentals’ of Jimmy Carter. Where lies the similarity? A strong sensitive dynamic build and a lightsome overseeing athletic mind. Some might call it the build of an anti-Keynesian clown, but I would rather call it the build of ‘Man the Athlete’ or, perhaps, ‘Man the Runner’. If I can trust my memory, it was Jimmy Carter who first named it as the ‘fundamentals’ of an economy which spread throughout the world under the more generous name of ‘privatization’. Some nations like Japan succeeded in adoption while other nations like France failed. I believe one lesson of adopting privatization is to never lose sight of the hidden ethics that oversees an economy. It was Christian faith for the Occidental world and ‘Samurai (Swordsman)’ Stoicism for Japan. This brings me to my last question. This Economist article does not clarify what kind of capitalistic ethic Prime Minister Cameron will hold dear in his inner mind while executing his duty in so-called ‘post-Christianity’ England.


I feel great optimism, and good wishes for Great Britain. This is undoubtedly the path forward for Mr Cameron. Perhaps, I was very reticent about a Liberal Democrat, and Tory coalition, but without doubt, decentralising the state, and making the state more economical in it's functioning, may make other departments of the state benefit. For example, Foreign Affairs, and Defense. I see the state becoming redundant in the future. The governments will only exist, as is intimated in lessons of Political Science, to mediate between different groups, so that there is unanimity among them.
I find nothing different from the optimism of the days of Mr Blair's Premiership, to the promise in Mr Cameron's Premiership, if optimism is the right word. All the political parties in Great Britain, are showing a practical bent of mind, in tackling the political issues of the nation, and undoubtedly, in foreign affairs, too.

James Yarwood

marph67, that is total nonsense. If you cant come up with something constructive to write, you are a troll.
Go pollute a different website please.


Britain is not a superpower but can hardly afford to equip its army, a little tinpot country that struggles to continue to serve its people. Crime and social deprivation is a trend and the current austerity measures will push the country to the edge of the developed world. The irony is that Cameron thinks the solution is to outsource everything. If allowed, he will outsource police and judiciary. This approach will reduce the country into Victorian age, and will lead to the explosion of even more cowboy private service providers. Yes for less state intervention but no for intrusion by private contractors.


Let's not forget it was the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher who provided a powerful centralizing impetus by capping the ability of local councils to raise tax.


Do you even know the difference let's say between communism/socialism/capitalism? If you did you would know the U.S. is one of the most socialist countries in the universe. And that started many years ago.
Let me give you a few examples to wit: farm subsidies, coal subsidies, milk subsidies, sugar beet subsidies, section 8 housing, food stamps, child milk program. You want me to go on? Oh yeah, Social Security. Which ones would you like to give up? Bank bailouts? Car mfg. bailouts? Your own bailout?

GC London

it really winds me up when Americans latch onto this "small Govt." nirvana propaganda. This from the country who only in this year gained anything like a universal health care programme we in Europe have enjoyed for decades. For most Americans championing "small Govt." is just short hand for greed and "I don't want to pay taxes and/or help anyone worse off than myself"
Im always astonished (but shouldn't be surprised) that most Americans seem to think low taxes are a good thing-and have no social responsibility at all. "The American Dream"

GC London

Lets all ignore the other leader talking about Germany's ballistic growth which is dragging the EU (including the UK) up from the gutter.
They certainly don't have "small Government", one could argue if the rest of the world followed Germany and not Camerons new Thatcherism read socially divisive and draconian spending cuts we all may be better off.

critical distance

I can't help laughing : radical Britain, not to the extent of removing monarchy, as would be constitutional reformer C-liar Nick Clegg ...


"So a gamble it remains. But it is one that in general this newspaper supports." This sentence could perfectly describe your position about the disgraceful Iraq adventure, dear Economist... We all know how it did end. And we know the premises too: a bunch of lies. Will it turn out to be the same sort of thing? Will these premises turn out to be lies too? Only time will tell. You and your friends do not need to worry anyway: insulting (to the rest of us) wages and (even more) insulting bonuses will keep you warm in case the social gamble turns nasty


The paralysis in the US economy will not right itself until we do something as drastic as GB, which means until all the well meaning misguided liberals (aka Democrats) are voted out of office. I cannot wait til' November when these muslim loving illegal immigrant coddling union pandering incompetent morons clear out of Washington enmasse.

patrick veale

i notive that your article assumes that government expenditures on institutionalize programs are the problem that when tackled leave a tabula rasa for a marklet economy to pull us all up by the heels.

Seoncd, I don't notice any cuts to subsidies for business, or military investments.

Finally, I don;t see any cutting policy that targets the financial sector. OOPs forgot. these people have offshore for the past twelve years, and they need shoring up.

So we cut the hell out of the smallest portion of our GDP, while leaving the rest unschated, or should i say nannyied.


What stuns me is how little hard evidence we have. Government spending provokes opinions, and opinions tell more about the speaker than about the problem.

Examples. We can't say which people do better when food and shelter are made their personal affair. We can't describe which children benefit from state-funded holidays. The whole "small government - large government" area is verbose, data-free.

A few things seem certain
a) there is no end to the good we wish to do, there is a rapid end to the money
b) decent folk deprived of earning power turn to crime to feed the kids
c) Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is still relevant - governments should first concentrate on keeping voters alive (no attackers, no water/carbohydrate famine), while having a large house full of bankers' furniture is something we could all live without.

Well done Cameron team for trying.

Clarence T Munro

Classic Economist croneyism. Cameron is engineering a recession, as did Thatcher, to achieve ideological, not pragmatic, goals. As with Thatcher, he has no mandate to do so, but he is at the head of a unitary highly centralised state. If, like Obama, his policies could be vetoed by a minority opposition, then his 'radicalism' would be much less than words.


@ PeckhamTerminator

I think everybody more or less agrees that the current financial and economic mess is mainly due to over-leveraging. Why did people borrow so much? Sociological data, especially for the US and the UK, give you a fairly clear-cut answer: because their (relative) incomes stagnated or dropped. By contrast incomes of the upper tier of society skyrocketed. (Oddly enough, there is a strong correlation between these phenomena and the reforms introduced by Mr Reagan and Baroness Tchatcher). The result was that huge parts of society lacked money to finance the lifestyle they were used to (which, btw, had also been the basis for the growth of the economy in whole), while a few rich guys had an abundance of money they wanted to invest... Financial innovation, unleashed by deregulation, contributed significantly, as it enabled people to borrow more for longer, and banks and shadow banks to give out more credit. It also made investment in speculative products far more profitable than investment in real-life economy.
JSWG got it right in one of the previous comments. What the UK and the rest of the world need is a more redistributive system. The cuts proposed by Cameron and co. are clearly not a step in that direction, quite the contrary - they are another step to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.


So to sum up, The Economist is celebrating that Cameron has near dictatorial powers and is able to impose his will without the need for consultation or consensus.

Thank you for acknowledging where your loyalties lie. At least when the whole thing goes pear shaped we will have no doubt as to which 'politician' is responsible. And no, I can't see the model being imported by democratic countries such as the US, Germany, France and Spain. The voters there have more voice.



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