By Daniel Hannan
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| Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand |
Is it possible for a Right-wing government to freeze spending and cut the deficit while remaining popular? As they say in New Zealand, ‘yih’. I’ve remarked before that, while no country is physically further from Britain, none is temperamentally closer. Yet there is a difference when it comes to public expenditure. A slowing of the rate of increase in the UK – there have, as yet, been no net cuts – is howled down as an assault on the poor directed by a clique of ancien régime aristocrats. In New Zealand, by contrast, ‘zero budgets’ are seen as prudent and sensible.
