Gordon Brown has shown the depths the economy faces in the UK by essentially raising a white flag to the Chinese and said "Come in and but UK plc".
The Chinese sovereign wealth fund, a $250bn investment fund set up by the Chinese, has encountered problem with some countries who are unwilling to see their companies bought, their famous brands taken over, and essentially taken away to China to be produced at a lower cost. However, Britain under Labour, now showing the economy is in a state, is desperate for foreign investment and it appears that if it means all our remaining famous brands going to Chinese State ownership, then it does not matter, so long as in the short term Britain gets a balance of payments boost from the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund.
"Where were was the prime minister when Britain when we were sold down the river to China," they will ask. "Holding the 'For Sale' board", will be the reply.
5 comments:
What are you on about?
You're sounding like an old Tory.
If they want to spend their money over here, great! Its good for us.
It does not matter who owns a company. Certainly not in the UK. They'd not be being run by the Chinese government.
I sound like a Tory ? Perhaps if I were to lecture people about how private schools are a good thing then I might sound more of a Tory.
On an economic level I see more views as more left of centre than right of centre.
It's not rhetoric. Brown is quite literally a traitor to Britain and specifically England.
There is a long tradition in which 'left' and 'right' liberals have supported free trade at times the Tories did not. Free Trade was the issue that led Churchill to abandon the Tories and become part of the great reforming Liberal government of 1906. Labour was supporting freed trade at times the Tories were not. This is why you are like an Old Tory, calling yourself a left liberal ignores both 'left' and 'classical' liberal traditions. The Liberal Party was the creation of free trade Tory follows of Peel, along with Whigs and Radicals. That birth of the Liberal Party was strongly connected with the struggle against he landed aristocracy to allow cheap corn to be imported to the benefit of the urban poor. Some purist free traders like Arthur Selsdon left the Liberal Party in the 1950s because they thought free trade agreements within a common European structure would undermine global free trade. The majority of Liberals supporting the original version of the EU certainly did not intend to abandon free trade, there was a disagreement about how to get there. Back in the 19th Century when the Radical hero Joseph Chamberlain moved towards Imperial Preference in trade he understood his place was with the Conservative Party. Your swipe at free trade has nothing to do with mainstream Liberal tradition in Britain, left or right, and the phobia about Chinese investment has unpleasantly chauvinistic overtones. Is there something intrinsically worse about Chinese sovereign fund investment as opposed to investment, say, by US companies tied to the statist industrial-military apparatus? On this issue Brown is more of a liberal than you are.
Barry, waht is illiberal is the lack of reciproation. We allow out firms to be taken over by all sorts of nations who often forbid foreign companies to own their own corporations. Is this fair or just plain stupid on our part ?
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