I did not use the UK in the headline, because the problems facing Great Britain at the moment are England driven. The report is quite the reverse of the Cameron / Osborne spin. The economy has made a housing boom led, financial sector driven, import fed recovery. The exceptional rise in asset values driven by Quantitative Easing has made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Debt remains at record levels everywhere. Energy and utility prices are too high. No headway has been made to resolve the acute shortages of affordable housing. Exports are not growing as expected but imports are. There has been no rebalancing of the economy which has been rebuilt on the old failed model of borrow and consume rather than invest and make. Crisis is in the wind in parts of the NHS, care in the community and childcare. Cuts have been considerable, but so has the fall off in tax revenue, so the one has cancelled out the other and the deficit remains just shy of a hundred billion per year.
If that were not enough, there is now a quarrel brewing with the EU which may lead to Britain walking out, with unpredictable consequences, and no game plan for the future. Nobody, repeat nobody, knows how the country is going to be governed, let alone by whom, with half baked proposals for constitutional reform ensuring only unfathomable confusion after May 2015, with a House of Commons full of MPs who have in many cases have been elected on less than 30% of the votes cast, who will be allowed to vote in the House for only this and not for that, whilst some can on that day vote for the other, but only if it is here and not there.
So that all adds up to the big success story that Cameron wants you to vote for. And what is Labour’s answer to this golden political opportunity? You may well ask! And who is going to step forward to fill the vacuum caused by the complete failure of a political class built entirely on spin doctors and special advisers?
You are right. Alex Salmond and Nigel Farage, the political weather makers.
And who is that lurking in the shadows? Ah yes. Boris.
So voters could end up with a beguiling choice between proven fools, clever opportunists and a rather endearing clown. My money is on the clown to come through in the end. But a lot will happen first.
Happy Christmas!