Hibernian Woe

As Iain Martin notes, it didn’t take Labour long to welcome the news that the Irish economy shrank by 1.2% last quarter*. Welcome isn’t quite how they put it but since Irish economic pain is a weapon with which the opposition can attack the coalition, Irish misery is a price worth paying so Ed Balls can feel vindicated.

At least those who think fiscal restraint is needed at times such as these and who were perhaps too quick to welcome last quarter’s healthy growth in Ireland can say they want to see Ireland do well.

In truth, both sides of the British (and for that matter American) debate are too fond of treating the Irish as though they were nothing more than tiny lab rats subjected to a series of interesting economic experiments. How useful those experiments are, however, is a moot point since a) Ireland was particularly vulnerable to the kind of perfect economic hurricane that hit it and b) even though times are bleak now it’s not at all obvious that they’d be better if only the government had decided to keep spending (money it doesn’t have) to “promote growth”.