Was Brownomics Socially Correct ?

Abstract

On Monday 26 January 2009, the Guardian published the results of a poll entitled “Who led us down the Road to Ruin – Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown”. The economic crisis was evoked as being “not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part”. This paper will try in a first part to question the hypothesis whether this recession was either a “natural phenomenon” or a “man-made disaster”. It will thus make an attempt at measuring the collective, individual, national, international and supra-national responsibilities in the British slump. The United Kingdom’s economy and economic policy from 1997 to 2010 will be put under close scrutiny in order to encompass the role of the different actors.The second question will be about the social impact of the economic crisis in the United Kingdom. This paper will first try to define the term “brownomics” analyzing the main features of Brown’s social policy from 1997 to 2010. Then, issues such as the job crisis, skill shortages, over-indebtedness and finally social and salary discrepancies will be examined to find out about what has become of the British economic model which fluctuates between liberalism and neo-Keynesianism.