The Past Speaks

That’s the title of a great  post on Simon Wren-Lewis’s “Mainly Macro” blog. Wren-Lewis is suggesting that the floods may be the tipping point where the British public comes to realise that David Cameron’s privatisation/austerity/cutback mode of government has reduced the ability of the state to provide public goods such as flood protection. (Readers will recall the George Bush’s lacklustre response to Hurricane Katrina convinced many middle-of-the-road Americans that the Republicans had taken the ideology of laissez-faire too far).

So far, I’m struck by how unwilling Labour is to take advantage of this issue and connect the flooding to the recent reductions in spending on flood reduction. Maybe they are trying to take the political high ground here, but their silence on this issue is mystifying.