Loser Britain.

The recurrence in Britain of losing high tax, high spending politics mixed in with loser fascination with social justice (undoubtedly not rooted in the concept of personal effort) and redistribution portend economic trouble. It's sad to see what Margaret Thatcher and the then Conservative Party achieved be chucked out the window.

Britain's road to economic ruin under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is nearly complete. Next year the U.K. government will spend more as a percentage of GDP than its German counterpart for the first time in a generation -- 45.7%, according to OECD estimates. . . .

. . . While final GDP growth figures for 2005 have not been published yet, the OECD's latest projection for Britain was 1.7% -- slightly ahead of Germany's rate of 1.5% and a fraction behind France's 1.9%.

If these predictions prove correct, Britain has joined the club of the losers. . . .

* * * *

. . . The current political atrophy and the acceptance of a center-left consensus by Britain's Conservative Party heralds a definitive rejection of the country's more economically liberal and successful past -- and a resumption of the country's postwar decline.

"Welcome to the Club of Losers." By Alex Story, Wall Street Journal Online, 1/20/06 (emphasis added; subscription required).