Four feathers for the intelligentsia

Jonathan Samuels - 08 June 2011

In recent days, a number of academics and economists who only a year ago backed the Government's plans to reduce the deficit have jumped ship and are suddenly lobbying for a Plan B, aka Plan Balls.

With the economy flagging, inflation still uncomfortably high and unemployment digging in - and set to rise further as the public sector sickle starts to swing in earnest - they are seeking an urgent readjustment to the Government's macro-economic policy.

Where's the spine in these people?

It will take more than 12 months for us to get out of the mess we're in and it's just typical of our effete economists and intellectuals to run for cover at the slightest sound of gunfire. Thing aren't going to plan, they holler and cry, while hastily assembling a makeshift white flag.

Well guess what? No plan, as anyone in the military will know, survives contact and there's always going to be some pain along the way.

Were these people expecting a crisis of the kind we are in to resolve itself in a matter of 12 months - and for things to go just swimmingly, without any discomfort or even the slightest hitch?

To get out of this mess, we need to give the policies time and, believe it or not, there are going to be some sacrifices and casualties along the path to recovery.

The IMF hit the nail on the head when, earlier this week, it said that the stability of the UK financial system is a "global financial good".

And while the IMF, too, conceded that weaker growth and stubbornly high inflation were unexpected, it said the current "deviations" are largely temporary. Like Osborne, it basically implied that we need to stick it out. 

And it's true. Caving in and suddenly throwing good money after bad will hardly engender stability, but it will certainly undermine credibility. And that could be fatal.

The global economic system urgently needs to rebuild its credibility and the UK, doing harder yards than most, is in the vanguard of this process.

It takes balls not to back Balls, which some people, very clearly, haven't got.