Britain falls down international competitiveness league

The Guardian reports that Britain has fallen again in the international league of most competitive economies:

"The Conservatives attacked Gordon Brown's economic record last night after a new survey showed Britain had slipped down international rankings on economies' competitiveness.

The World Economic Forum's annual global report put Britain in ninth place in the world league for overall competitiveness, down from second place last year.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said: "This report makes grim reading for anyone who cares about Britain's ability to compete in the face of the new economic revolution. As we become less competitive and not such a good place to do business, Britain is paying the long-term price for a decade of Labour government."

Gordon Brown likes to pretend that the economy is his strongest card but, in reality, Britain has grown more slowly over the last ten years than all other English-speaking nations.  Mr Brown has not used ten years of economic growth to prepare Britain for leaner times.   In good times economic dependency should fall but under Brown it has risen.  Our transport infrastructure has not been renewed.  Billions have been wasted in the public sector with productivity rates falling in most key services.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

The main reason why our economy is failing to be competitive is because sterling is overvalued and Gordon Brown aims to keep it that way as the strong pound masks the underlying inflation that has built up under Labour. Our nation's ever growing import dependency would be there for all to see if sterling weakened and the cost of imports began to soar. Gordon Brown will do whatever he can to keep the pound overvalued because it his is bail-out.

Don't believe either all the myths about the BOE being independent. The moment the BOE stops doing Gordon Brown's bidding he will step in an use his emergency powers to overrule any BOE decision he doesn't agree with.

If the time came when the pound began to plummet in value and the BOE didn't act you can be sure that Brown will step in and crank up interest rates to support the currency. While we have such a strong pound our exporters are starting from behind scratch. What we need is the pound operating at the right level, not too weak or too strong.