Or at least it ought to be. The fascination with Thatcher-lite surely has to be over with yet another damning report. Blair may have left almost two years ago but the ever-muddling Gordon Brown has continued the same governing strategy, but with less spin. Those of us on the American left were given our own version of Thatcher-lite during the Clinton years. If only we cuddle up to business interests a bit more, everything will somehow work out. Let business be business and the money will trickle down to the rest, in Reaganite fashion.
We saw business take off and sure, unemployment dropped but those profits started to trickle down less and less. The extra money that many thought was there was only a mirage. It was cheap credit to feed top management's disinterest in letting money leave the boardroom. The poor became poorer both in the UK and the US. Especially children. But since when have political leaders really care about the poor? The Guardian:
Britain under Gordon Brown is a more unequal country than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s, after the incomes of the poor fell and those of the rich rose in the three years after the 2005 general election.
Deprivation and inequality in the UK rose for a third successive year in 2007-08, according to data from the Department for Work and Pensions that prompted strong criticism from campaign groups for the government's backsliding on its anti-poverty goals.
In a further blow, the government failed to make a dent in the number of children or pensioners living in poverty after big increases the previous year. Almost 17,000 more children in England are on free school meals this year compared with last, according to government data also published yesterday.
