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"Brown's spending plans like 'addict returning to the drug', says archbishop

Brown's spending plans like 'addict returning to the drug', says archbishop
Rowan Williams condemns prime minister's response to 'reality check' of recession
Jo Adetunji and agencies
Thursday December 18 2008
guardian.co.uk

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, today condemned the prime minister's response to the economic crisis, describing his efforts to boost spending in a downturn as like "the addict returning to the drug".

Williams said the credit crunch had been a "reality check" in a climate of unsustainable greed, and it should be used to provoke a fundamental rethink of the pursuit of wealth. It demonstrated that the country had been "going in the wrong direction" by relying on financial speculation rather than "making things", he said.

It was "a reminder that what I think some people have called fairy gold is just that ? that sooner or later you have to ask: 'What are we making or what are we assembling or accumulating wealth for?'."

The criticism is wounding because Gordon Brown has prided himself on the consensus he believes he has gathered worldwide for a "fiscal stimulus" to prop up the economy and boost confidence in the downturn, including a temporary cut of 2.5% in VAT. Downing Street made clear its irritation over the remarks while trying to avoid a slanging match with the archbishop.

Asked in an interview with Radio 4's Today programme whether spending was the right way to tackle the downturn, the archbishop said: "It seems a little bit like the addict returning to the drug. When the Bible uses the word 'repentance', it doesn't just mean beating your breast, it means getting a new perspective, and that is perhaps what we are shrinking away from."

He added: "It is about what is sustainable in the long term and if this is going to drive us back into the same spin, I do not think that is going to help us."

People should not "spend to save the economy", but instead spend for "human reasons", for their own needs, Williams said.

The credit crunch showed that British society had "accepted the message that it's possible to have an endless spiral of accumulating wealth that has nothing to do with producing anything", Wiliams said. Instead there should be "some very tough questions internationally about what sort of regulation is feasible internationally at a time when, clearly, an unregulated financial world doesn't make sense".

And he added: "I think there are some huge moral lessons to be learnt about the nature of accumulating wealth ? a lot of people are waiting to hear an acknowledgement of some responsibility for irresponsible behaviour."

Williams acknowledged it was "suicidally silly" for him to get involved in the debate. "I am not an economist by any stretch of the imagination. But I want to ask where these moral questions are in the economic discourse."

The prime minister, responding to the remarks, said that as the son of a church minister he always listened to senior church figures. He said he backed the archbishop's call for action against reckless bankers, but it would be irresponsible of him not to intervene when Britons were suffering.

"I think the archbishop would also agree with me that every time someone becomes unemployed or loses their home or a small business fails it is our duty to act and we should not walk by on the other side when people are facing problems," he said.

"That's the reason why our fiscal policy is designed to give real help to families and businesses and to give them that help now."

The Conservatives refused to be drawn into the row. "We're just not getting involved with it," said a party spokesman.

The comments came after Williams had used an interview with the New Statesman to say he would be relaxed about the disestablishment of the church. Today, he said he did not support it at the moment. But he added: "I see the case for it, and I certainly don't think that the church would be destroyed by disestablishment, I believe the church exists because of God, not because of the state."

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009

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