The Financial Times and the London Economist Lose Their Minds
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
Mattt Yglesias:
Matthew Yglesias: [Gordon Brown] is... being punished for an economic crisis he didn’t cause, couldn’t have stopped, and has actually handled quite well. The global financial meltdown was not unique to Britain.... And thanks to... Brown... kept the UK out of the Euro... presided over substantial stimulus the British economy is actually weathering the recession pretty well.... Conditions aren’t great--they’re actually quite bad--but the situation is much better than what you see in other European countries....
[The] FT, in the course of endorsing David Cameron, concedes that “As a crisis manager, Gordon Brown has been a better premier than his critics claim” and simply doesn’t say anything about the substance of the Tories’ opposition to stimulus, a policy that had it been adopted would have sank the economy.
The Economist does take this issue head-on and concludes that the Tories “were wrong to oppose the economic stimulus after the banking crash” but endorses them anyway....
Britain confronted a giant economic challenge and the center-right party responded with such bad policies that even center-right business-focused newspapers think they were wrong, but... [urge] voters are urged to vote Tory anyway...
