SF in power would drag us into a financial hellhole too
REGULAR people in Britain have been forced to the edge of a financial hellhole, directly as a result of the actions of prime minister Liz Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, both wilful and proven economic nincompoops. This amazing and self-maiming disaster being played out in the UK is a warning of what happens when anti-intellectual, expert-hating buffoons take charge. And we should pay strict attention, because that’s the risk we face here as well if Sinn Féin ever takes over at Government Buildings.
Apart altogether from Sinn Féin’s attitude to property rights – a subject laden with heavy constitutional concerns, and setting aside also its historic support for murderous and unconscionable IRA violence – the party appears to think money is a resource that never stops giving.
That’s why, just like Truss and Kwarteng, it insists that a cap on energy prices is the way to go, failing to grasp that such a move is nothing but a blank cheque to oil, gas, solar and wind farm companies – and with our signature at the bottom.
Has nobody reminded Sinn Féin what happened when Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Brian Cowen and thenfinance minister Brian Lenihan foisted the bank guarantee on us during the financial crash 14 years ago?
DID they not hear how this led to the €64bn bank bailout, the loss of our sovereignty, mass unemployment and emigration, the devastation of communities, families and individuals, more than a decade of lost opportunities and manifest failures to improve health and education, and a homeless and housing crisis that now appears unfixable?
All that is what happens when doctrinaire, know-all politicians brazenly push on with massive spending programmes, like the £161bn madness introduced by chancellor Kwarteng in Britain, all of which is funded by borrowing.
The contrast between Kwarteng’s recklessness – and the entirely negative and predicted reaction from the markets – and the Budget announced in the Dáil by Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath on Tuesday could not be clearer. In the round, their €11bn spending package – which includes more than €4bn in so-called ‘one-off measures’ – appears sensible by comparison, primarily because it doesn’t require more debt to pay for it.
Donohoe and McGrath demonstrated how centre politics can work with what can fairly be regarded as prudent management of the nation’s finances. After the Budget announcement the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) said the Government had struck ‘a balance between providing support and avoiding adding excessively to higher inflation’.
This involvement of experts is another glaring difference to what happened in the UK. Almost the first thing Kwarteng did as chancellor was sack the treasury’s veteran permanent secretary Tom Scholar in order to purge ‘orthodoxy’ from government thinking.
Then Kwarteng refused to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility (Britain’s IFAC) to assess his financial package, since it was only a ‘mini-budget’ and not a full one, leading critics to describe it mockingly as a Special Fiscal Operation, borrowing from Vladimir Putin’s title for his invasion of Ukraine (which he won’t call a war).
ALL OF which prompted the highly respected economic guru Mohamed El-Erian, former IMF deputy director, to brand the Truss-Kwarteng spending spree as something not expected from a G7 member, but rather instead from a developing country. And like developing countries, Truss now has very few options, one being a complete U-turn
involving total political humiliation, which she has already rejected. Massive spending cuts may now be her only way to avoid savagely higher charges on government debt.
As we now see on the streets of Britain, all this has a direct effect on regular people attempting to secure mortgages and businesses
trying to arrange finance with banks. Stunned British lenders have already withdrawn more than 1,500 mortgage products citing a complete inability to see where interest rates are heading.
We’ve paid a high price in Ireland for stubborn political incompetence at the very highest level. Now, unfortunately, it’s Britain’s turn.
Shockingly however, despite all we’ve been through, it appears our collective memory is short. Like countries throughout the world (even the United States) considering a return to political authoritarianism which we all know caused such catastrophic human suffering in our recent past, we too are heading to the edge of potential disaster, by turning to Sinn Féin for answers they don’t have.