Socialist Britain will drive more expats away to the Gulf with its austerity

Not since the 1930s have Britons been asked to take a bigger cut in their standard of living. With the greatest burden falling on the richest 20 per cent of the population this austerity can only be characterised as socialist, miles away from the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s that brought back British prosperity.

The British Government is trying so hard to be fair it is forgetting what motivates wealth creators. They want to get rich. They do not do it out of some obligation to society. Forget that are you are condemning a nation to greater poverty than necessary.

Socialist politicians

Why is there such an absence of free market, pro-business thinking in the UK today? Perhaps it is because the government is composed of professional politicians and trust fund kids who have only ever spent wealth and have no idea how to create it.

It is amazing that a nominally conservative-liberal coalition is so wedded to socialist dogma and socialist levels of public spending. It was the 13 years of socialist expansion of the public sector that brought the country to its present debt mountain, that and a finance minister who saw hiking house prices as his way to the top.

Now that needs to be reversed. It is really that simple. Mrs Thatcher rolled back the frontiers of the state in the early 80s. It was very painful at the time but the refocusing of the economy into the wealth creating sectors did work. Unemployment eventually fell and when it did people were doing productive work and not jobs that cost more in subsidies than they earned.

Without such a change all a UK government can offer is to manage the gradual decline of the country. Worse still the most able and educated will gradually leave for foreign parts. The Gulf States will gain as if the natural wealth of oil is not a sufficient endowment.

Expat exodus

But who can blame these expats if that is where the opportunities lie and they are not going to be taxed as though being wealthy was some kind of disease that required blood letting. Then again they may be more use working abroad than unemployed or underemployed at home.

However, UK citizens should be angry at the failure of imagination that lies behind the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement yesterday. It is not a formula for success, and primed everybody for economy disappointing yet again and blaming it all on the eurozone whose economic crisis looks inevitable.

Only when Britain get its own house in order with radical cuts to the state, lower taxation and a better deal for the private sector will austerity really have a purpose. In the meantime socialist economic management will just result in more expats heading to the Gulf for a fair deal.