London
BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES in Britain have just concluded what they call their conferences–the rallying of party activists to discuss policy and hear from their leaders. Labour met last week in Bournemouth and lurched left, reasserting its confidence in centrally controlled targets to make the dysfunctional health care and education systems perform better. The Conservatives’ meeting closed this week. Members of this often-fractious gathering united, and rallied to their young leaders’ call for lower taxes, more prisons, controls on immigration, and tax policies that favor families.
All this against a background of an economy that has experienced a good old-fashioned run on a bank, forcing the government to guarantee deposits; the beginning of a problem as mortgage rates re-set (virtually all mortgages have variable-rate clauses in the UK): and nervousness that the credit squeeze will hit the real economy very hard.
