In October and December last year the leader writers at The New York Times penned two scathing editorials about the coalition’s economic policies. One, titled ‘Britain’s Self-Inflicted Misery’, described spending cuts as “a harmful quack cure”. “Austerity”, it argued, “rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful.”
At first glance, it is startling that America’s moderately liberal paper of record took such a line. It is a line that, in this country, no shadow cabinet member would be allowed to air. But in those pieces, The New York Times wasn’t really talking about British politics. Rather, the authors of those editorials had their eyes on US politics and the presidential election. The pieces were pre-emptive broadsides at Mitt Romney, who it seems will comfortably, if tepidly, win the Republican nomination.
As much as we Brits love to gawp at the Republican candidates’ social attitudes, the GOP looks likely to nominate someone concerned with the economy, jobs and government spending, not ‘gays, guns and god’. His politics look more at home in the British Conservative party than among bible-belt Republicans.
It is hard to say with much certainty what Romney believes; there are some things Republicans have to say to win the presidency. But discount the over-the-top patriotism and sops to the right on social issues and what remains is the stock-in-trade of a Conservative MP.
Take a speech made by Romney while the votes were being counted in Iowa. Obama, he said, “wants to make [America] an entitlement society where government takes from some to give to others.
“The only people who do well in that setting are the people in the government who do the taking from one to give to the others. The right course for America is to remain a merit society, an opportunity nation.”
There is little between this rhetoric and Cameron’s talk on the “something for nothing” culture.
On government spending, Romney’s latest suggestion is radical: to cut government spending to no more than 20% of GDP (US government currently spends around 40%). Nothing that drastic is happening in Britain, but the difference is one of degree, not kind. Romney, like many British conservatives, has argued that bloated spending is government’s most urgent problem.
By circumstance rather than design, Romney’s politics are British in another respect. His faith – Romney is a Mormon – means he is treated with suspicion in parts of America’s evangelical right. As a result, the usually inevitable talk of faith-based politics and decision-making will be absent from his campaign, making it look less American and more British.
Too much speculation here is difficult. Romney’s platform is still changing and in important policy areas like healthcare and climate change, he is yet to pitch to the independent voters who will decide the election. But with Romney ascendant, America’s right wing, which has seemed so alien to British politics for so long, may be about to become unexpectedly familiar.
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