Editorial

It’s hard to feel confident that Britain is still a “pocket superpower,” as Stryker McGuire puts it. Libya is a reminder of the downsizing of Britain’s role in the world. Security officials, who give Colonel Muammar Gaddafi just months to survive (not a view shared by Anthony Loyd), privately say that when he goes, the British military action there will end. National debt, even more than the lessons of Iraq, constrains any impulse to stay.

Our report on the Conservative-Lib Dem government’s first year explores whether the coalition has a convincing answer, above all, to the predicament of debt which now affects Britain and much of the developed world. No, says Anatole Kaletsky; the cuts are too much, too quickly, a view many will share—and the full effect has not yet been felt. But at least Britain has a plan to cut its deficit, which it needs, as the IMF crisply notes. There is a case, too, that it helps to have a coalition representing a majority to carry out painful reforms, at least some of which are indisputably necessary. President Barack Obama, more than two years after his election, still lacks a credible plan for cutting debt, leaving him unprotected against a Republican onslaught.

As Peter Kellner shows in our poll, the Lib Dems have been the greatest casualty of the year. Clegg has made concessions that many will not forgive: university fees (although he’s won more cash for students, and more access for those from poor backgrounds); GP fundholding (although he’s diluted some reforms); fuel prices, and more. But it’s wrong, a year on, to pronounce the Lib Dems ineffectual. They have made the coalition significantly more liberal, as the scorecards of party bloggers tenaciously record. Beyond the referendum on the alternative vote, there is the plan for election to most of the seats in the House of Lords. No bid to take back powers from the EU. The quiet shelving of the tax allowance for marriage. Less use of prison; it’s true that Ken Clarke is keen on this, but in a pure Tory government the right might have stopped him. The effect is most visible on tax: lifting 500,000 low earners out of the system, according to the IFS, more tax on capital gains, a mooted new property tax. That’s not nothing, even if voters savage Clegg and his party for years.

If you want a tragi-comedy of the clash between strapped-for-cash Britain and the new wealth of China, read “Lot 800.” A vase with intricately worked sides and four panels depicting leaping fish was unearthed in a house clearance in a northwest London suburb, and sold for £43m at a nearby auction. It set a world record both for Chinese art and for ceramics—if, that is, the sale finally goes through. A torrent of money poured over the phone lines from China to the Bainbridge auction rooms, where lots usually fetch £20, maybe £200. Above all, this is a story of modern China: new fortunes, but old constraints on spending them. This frenzy of money with nowhere to go found its outlet last November in Pinner.