The Nation: Britain's Winter of Discontent

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Britain's Winter of Discontent
By D.D. Guttenplan

February 11, 2009


Less than three months have passed since that halcyon day when Gordon Brown, not previously known as a gaffe-prone politician, provoked howls of mirth in the House of Commons after claiming that his government's prompt response to the credit crunch had "saved the world." George W. Bush was still in the White House, and the contrast between the British prime minister's bold plan to partly nationalize failing banks--making billions of pounds of fresh capital and government loan guarantees available in return for preferred shares--and Henry Paulson's dithering made Brown's boast, though unintended, almost plausible. (He'd meant to say "saved the banks"--a confusion that tells its own story.) But no one's laughing now.

On February 4 Brown told Parliament that a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus was needed "to take the world out of depression." Though he tried to pass off his use of the D-word as another slip of the tongue, Brown's inadvertent candor was only the latest sign that this really is the winter of Britain's discontent:

§ On January 28 the International Monetary Fund predicted the global economic crisis will hit Britain harder than any other developed country, with the economy expected to shrink by 2.8 percent this year. (The projected downturn in the United States is 1.6 percent.)

§ Just as Britons dug out from the heaviest snowfall in decades, a wave of wildcat strikes at power plants and oil refineries over the use of foreign labor threatened the country's energy supplies. Echoing Brown's 2007 slogan of "British jobs for British workers," the protests were a reminder of the dangers to domestic peace posed by a long-term slump.

§ To compound Brown's worries, the most recent poll by the Guardian showed that nearly two-thirds of British voters thought the government's efforts to contain the crisis were doomed. Overall, the Tories, flat-lining since the economy turned sour, now lead Labour by 44 percent to 32 percent. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/guttenplan?rel=hp_picks