What has happened in Ireland is a stark warning to us here in Britain. It could happen here too, if we are not careful. It almost certainly would have happened by about this time if we'd still had a Labour government.
There is a lot of useful information in Jeremy Warner's article in The Telegraph, especially how much the Irish situation has changed in just a few years. Their budget deficit has shot up from 12% to approaching three times that at 32%. Their overall national debt is up from less than 25% of the country's GDP to almost the full amount, and looks set to rise to around 150%.
House prices have halved, salaries have been slashed, and it is all heading south over there. We must not let something similar happen here. We have the benefits of a larger scale of economy, which provides some capacity for dealing with extraordinary times, and an independent currency (no Euro here!) but we cannot afford to be complacent.
Fortunately we now have a government that is generally on the right course for recovery, as leading independent bodies have been confirming for some time, most recently the IMF. Of course, that has meant that Labour and their supporters are now trying to rubbish the IMF, as its messages don't agree with what they are (incorrectly) claiming. Remember: we know that they've never had a problem with that organisation before, especially when Denis Healey had to go to them when Labour last almost bankrupted our country and ever since.
Indeed, Gordon Brown is known to have been trying to get more funds into the Fund so that they could bail us out again, in case he had remained Prime Minister.
I suppose we just need to remain alert and not forget the past, both recent and historic. Labour always bring Britain to the verge of bankruptcy, and they always lie about it.
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