So, according to this article, a lot of the public spending we have already flagged here on ET was going to the depressed areas to bolster employment. Since we also flagged the high number of long-term unemployed in the same areas who were on Incapacity Benefit (and who, if they were counted as unemployed, would push the national 5% unemployment rate cited up to about 7%), it would seem that, without the Keynesian effort made by Brown, the state of the old industrial regions would be totally, utterly catastrophic today.
But Thatcher knew best. In a globalising world we should open up and play comparative advantage. Switch to services, and Britain's best bet, financial services.
The existence of boom and bust within a nation is rare, according to the OECD
Perhaps there's only one nation in the UK: South-East England ? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
The point is that until now the UK has been held up as a paragon to be emulated because of its (largely fictional) free-market policies.
