Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity [Paperback]

The political history in this book seems thoroughly researched and probably correct. There are copious references although over half of these are actually media articles. Beyond this the content is less robust. In chapter 1 Rolls Royce is cited as an example of industrial decline in the 1970s. Rolls did not fail by being backward looking but due to adopting an innovative aero engine technology which proved to be in advance of its time, just the kind of entrepreneurial risk taking advocated later in the book.
From this book Conservative philosophy seems principally to be work hard and make lots of money or if you can't make lots of money work hard anyway. Work is, indeed, part of our Christian heritage `The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat' but this is not the whole picture. Jesus said `A man's life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions'. Are people motivated by anything other than high pay and low taxes?
An example given (p62) is a hard working taxi driver is motivated to work 60 hrs per week to take home £10 per hour net. On the other hand, on p69 it appears to be de-motivating for an entrepreneur working (say) 80 hrs to take home £25 per hour up to £150,000 and £20 above that. Why is this? Given the number of words in this book the authors have missed an opportunity to develop their arguments in more depth.
There is little that is new, informative or practical in this book. It is not worth the 30mins I worked to pay for it, don't buy.

The irony of five MPs lecturing the electorate on the virtues and necessity of hard work probably won't be lost on a lot of people, but once an individual becomes a member of our rotten parliament it seems they have to take leave of certain senses much as they lose touch with reality. The fact that it took five of them to come up with this slim and intellectually emaciated volume says enough about their work ethic when it could have been written by any reasonably erudite individual with a basic grasp of how to use statistics and Google. But then this book is far more about personal ambitions than it is being truthful with the electorate, which along with other considerations has been drowned in Marx's `icy water of egotistical calculation'

The authors are apparently future stars of the Conservative party, which only goes to show how it takes only the peddling of some strain of Thatcherism to attain that status. This in essence is a book which argues nothing new, then. It contains no fresh insights into what is wrong with British society, but inevitably it peddles the usual litany of things that those on the Right get themselves into a lather about -the welfare state, the laziness of British workers, the tax system and how the politicians responsible for that system impertinently presume the highest earners should pay any tax at all, celebrity status as the only thing that `the young' aspire to etc.

It makes for tiresome reading, although when the City of London is exalted as some kind of hotbed of hard work, that's being polite. Just how much time and effort does it take to pick up a phone and fix an interest rate? Tuggy Tug `standing on a rough street corner in Brixton waiting for someone to mug' (p.72) is cited negatively for his `get rich quick' attitude which the authors claim is likely to leave him in prison or dead. If as far as these authors are concerned Tug had the socially acceptable `get rich quick' attitude he'd be getting the better of his background by working in the City, and in the fullness of time going on to stand as a budding Tory MP. The difference lies not in the end but the means by which it's achieved. This is either an argument far too subtle for these authors to grasp, or something that has no place in their psuedo-rhetoric.

In citing as they do the examples of emerging nations such as Brazil, the authors' blithe disregard for the differences in worldwide standards of living is such a glaring oversight that it must be intentional. Either they have failed to grasp the significance of those differences or they see the driving down of the British standard of living as a price well worth paying for the furtherance of their political ambitions.......sorry, maybe I could have done them a favour there and written `...for British global competitiveness' but I'd like to adhere to the truth.

Given my critique of this book, I should mention that I hold no brief for the Labour party either. My contempt for the three main political parties differs only by degrees, and I suspect I'm not alone there. But as those on the Right seem by some bizarre process pathologically incapable of seeing themselves as anything other than the embodiment of `the national interest', and those on the Left stare into the black hole that is the Labour party under Miliband minor's so-called leadership, such a stance seems abundantly justified.

I'm not a Tory, far from it, I'd consider myself a pragmatist concerned only with promoting those ideas that work.

This is exactly what this book sets out to do, it takes 5 or 6 key failings in Britain today and looks at how other nations have solved them in the past or are currently solving them now. It is written with a sense of (justified) urgency as it sees how the BRIC nations are rapidly developing their global influence - if Britain doesn't get its house in order soon then we're doomed to be left behind as a small nation on the fringes of an EU bloc from which we are isolated. The authors get this and convey it convincingly, but their sense of optimism in Britain's future is contagious. It does energise you to read it, to think that if only we tried this or that we could suddenly emerge from the recession much better placed to thrive in the multi-polar world of tomorrow.

This is not a particularly long book and is well worth a read. It's refreshing to see a reformist zeal among the next generation of Tory MPs and is something I have yet to come across from any similarly minded reformist group of Labour MPs (although I am looking and remain hopeful).

A useful and exciting addition to the debate on Britain's future.