Cameron's Bold Budget

Cameron's Tories have just unveiled budget cuts on a scale which would overawe Ronald Reagan and dazzle Margaret Thatcher.

Republicans have been dismissive of David Cameron’s Conservative party. Yet his coalition government has now unveiled a budget with spending cuts beyond anything Republicans have proposed. As my latest column for The Week points out, the GOP can learn a thing or two from the British PM.

It's fair to say that American Republicans have to this point disdained David Cameron's modernized British Conservatives.

Since gaining the leadership of the Conservatives in 2005, Cameron has committed his party to a “green” agenda and committed Britain to reducing carbon emissions. Cameron has generally endorsed same-sex civil unions and gay equality. He has attacked the Labour party for policies he says have widened income inequality in Britain, has instituted affirmative action to increase the number of female and minority Conservative political candidates and has declared the Conservatives “the party of the NHS” – Britain’s government- run health-care monopoly.

So obviously Cameron must be a big squish, or worse.

In fact, when the Cameron Conservatives fell just short of gaining a majority in the British House of Commons in May elections, Cameron’s U.S. critics expressed vindication. Given the unpopularity of Gordon Brown’s Labour government, they charged, surely a “real” Conservative would have done much better? Then David Cameron – the self-described “liberal Conservative” – formed a coalition with the actual Liberals, the Liberal Democrats. The price of that coalition: a referendum on Liberal-favored changes to the electoral system. Worse and worse! As Mark Steyn wrote on May 8, 2010, at National Review Online. "I'm not quite sure I can put into words sufficiently politely my contempt for David Cameron."

Fast forward to October. Those squishy British Conservatives in their sell-out coalition with the Liberals have unveiled budget cuts on a scale to overawe Ronald Reagan and dazzle Margaret Thatcher.

Some 490,000 government jobs will be cut.

The qualification age for a government pension will rise to 66.

Benefits for workers claiming to be too sick to work will be time-limited.

Local governments will have to cut their budgets by 7.1 percent each year for the next four years.

Public-sector workers will have to contribute more of their earnings to their pension plans.

The social housing budget will be cut by 60 percent.

Families earning more than the average income will lose their weekly cash child benefit.

And the list goes on–drastically so.

Click here to read the rest.