David Brooks acknowledges the UK's reality moment

David Brooks is an American columnist with the New York Times who has long admired the direction being taken by David Cameron. Earlier this year he contrasted Cameron's style with that of Obama and the GOP:

"we now have two models. We have the Obama model, which is technocratic, sending teams of experts to solve problems. Very centralized, actually. And then if you want the alternate model -- the Republicans in this country unfortunately have no model because they haven’t thought about it, or they haven’t thought productively about it.

But there is another model. And that is David Cameron, the British conservative leader in Britain. And he says if you’re going to be the centralized state, I’m going to be society. Capitalism is not good enough. It needs to be embedded in institutions. And you’re going to champion the technocrats in government; I’m going to champion every other institution in society, whether it’s family, career associations, every other -- the church -- every other association you can think of. I’m going to be the society party and going to make you the state party"

Today, he writes about the reality moment i.e. "That which can’t continue doesn’t. A nation can spend and spend, pile debt upon debt, but eventually there comes a reality moment when some leader emerges to say enough is enough and when decent people, looking around at themselves and their own best nature, respond by demanding a return to responsibility." Britain has reached its reality moment he says, and he praises George Osborne for a sensible and honest conference speech, setting out a series of austere measures to deal with the country's huge public debt. He also notes that the Conservative Party has "treated British voters as adults for a year now, with a string of serious economic positions".

"The key is that Osborne is not merely offering pain, but a different economic vision — different from Labour and different from the Thatcherism that was designed to meet the problems of the 1980s.

In the U.S., the economic crisis has caused many to question capitalism. But Britain has discredited the center-left agenda with its unrelenting public spending, its public development agencies and disappointing public-private investment partnerships.

Osborne and David Cameron, the party leader, argue that Labour’s decision to centralize power has undermined personal and social responsibility. They are offering a responsibility agenda from top to bottom. Decentralize power so local elected bodies have responsibility. Structure social support to encourage responsible behavior and responsible spending.

If any Republican is looking for a way forward, start by doing what they’re doing across the Atlantic."

We live in difficult economic times where the future of my generation will be determined in part by how effectively we manage to balance our public finances. In Osborne and Cameron, we have credible, incisive and strong leadership at the very top who have a vision for this country and who did not shirk during Manchester's conference from telling the British public the harsh truth about just how bad it has got and the tough measures needed ahead to bring our economy and country back into shape. It's very easy to tell people what they'd like to hear. Leadership is what I witnessed in Manchester: informing people about they need to hear and co-opting them to be full participants through the responsibility agenda.