President Obama’s visit to the UK this week was a hugely significant event. Obama is a hugely popular figure in Britain and gained a very warm reception from public and politicians alike.
Barack Obama listens to David Cameron during their joint press conference this week
The event is also highly significant because, for the first time in decades, a US President has crossed the Atlantic in an urgent quest for policy ideas. After years of British politicians and thinkers looking across the pond for inspiration, the UK has now become a well of inspiration for Americans.
At the heart of this lies the growing American crisis about the size of the US national debt and budget deficit. No longer is a US President able to take the relaxed demeanour of President Reagan when he suggested that, “I don’t worry about the deficit. It’s big enough to take care of itself.”
But the US national debt now stands at a staggering $14 trillion, by far the highest level ever. The US budget deficit is now at the highest level since World War II. The IMF has warned the US of the need to take decisive action to cut their level of debt, warning, in unusually decisive tones that, “the United States needs to accelerate the adoption of credible measures to reduce debt ratios.” When a ratings agency downgraded the US government’s debt last month, it was a further wakeup call to the world’s only remaining superpower.
Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a brutal battle over what spending to cut. Republicans in congress launched one plan. President Obama tore into it last month, proposing a completely different plan. Both sides are miles away from agreement. In fact only a last minute deal reached between the President and the Republican leadership averted a shutdown of the federal government.
How can the divide be bridged, and what can Obama learn from the UK? Here the government is trying to get our galloping debts under control with a mix of tax rises and spending cuts.
The government has also moved to put the public finances on a more sustainable basis by changing the way that the state pension works, and how benefits are uprated in line with inflation. The UK is also introducing a series of innovative reforms in schools, hospitals and the police, which will allow better public services to be delivered for less money. For example, in London we now see police officers patrolling individually, rather than in pairs – meaning twice as many patrols for the same money.
Many of the reforms being carried out in the UK have emerged from think tanks, such as Policy Exchange, and for the first time in a generation the new ideas in politics are flowing from the UK to the US, rather than the other way round.
At present, US politics is stuck in a rut of polarization and partisan insults. Despite our famously aggressive political culture, the current coalition government does at least show how people with big political differences can learn to work together.
Amidst the fanfare of a big Presidential visit, Obama has been here on serious business. He will have been looking for ideas to capture the imagination for election year, in an attempt to pull the US from a perceived national malaise. It is a tribute to the energy and vigour of British political thinking that he has been looking for these ideas in the UK.