Was Britain really better in the 1940s?
Andrew Sullivan approvingly quotes Barry Eichengreen on Britain: [Britain] failed to develop a coherent policy response to the financial crisis of the 1930’s. Its political parties, rather than working together to address pressing economic problems, remained at each other’s throats. The country turned inward. Its politics grew fractious, its policies erratic, and its finances increasingly unstable. In short, Britain’s was a political, not an economic, failure. And that history, unfortunately, is all too pertinent to America’s fate. Now there's no doubt that Britain's political parties (once they got over six years of intensive cooperation during the war) did engage in a debate about how to run the country. Partly about its role in the world, but more importantly the nature and extent of the welfare state, the kind of industrial policy to follow, and how the education system and the country's infrastructure should be built. Its most important decision about its "role ...