Two little quotes from the news.

First, an article in the Times, written in 2006 by George Osborne. It starts:

A generation ago, the very idea that a British politician would go to Ireland to see how to run an economy would have been laughable. The Irish Republic was seen as Britain’s poor and troubled country cousin, a rural backwater on the edge of Europe. Today things are different. Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking, and that is why I am in Dublin: to listen and to learn.

And from the BBC News website this month:

The demise of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy has been spectacular. The IMF described it as the deepest recession of any advanced country. Ireland’s boom was built on the success of the construction industry, fuelled by cheap loans.

The total cost of rescuing Ireland’s banking sector is expected to be 50bn euros.

Ireland are about to embark on a new four-year budgetary plan, while the UK government is going ahead with implementing Ireland’s last four-year plan, since that seems to have worked so well.   There is a fair chance that Ireland’s economic troubles will bring down the government within six months, unless all the voters have emigrated to Australia and New Zealand by then, which they are planning to do in their thousands.

So much for “the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking”.

Four years ago George Osborne asked:

What has caused this Irish miracle, and how can we in Britain emulate it?

The scary thing is that, having seen where a policy of austerity has got Ireland, it hasn’t stopped Osborne pursuing the same policies here.

Hat-tip to @Paul Burgin