91Èȱ¬

As British politics awaits the outcome of today's Oldham by-election, after which we can better discern what's in store for 2011, I thought I'd confine myself this morning to comments on two international developments.

First, these terrible shootings in Arizona. Some on both sides of the Atlantic have rushed to blame them on America's increasingly bitter and divisive political discourse. After spending much of the summer filming a 91Èȱ¬2 documentary on the Tea Party I have first hand experience of how hyperbolic, polarised and unpleasant debate in America has become.

But I have yet to see a scintilla of evidence that it had anything to do with the killings.

Many distinguished voices have claimed it to be so. And I can easily understand how a poisoned political atmosphere can lead to tragic events involving disturbed individuals. But facts do matter and I have yet to see a single fact linking what happened in Tucson to America's current political climate. Some might wish it to be so, to temper the current discourse or settle scores with the Tea Party. But wishing is not the same as evidence.

As things stand, there is nothing to link the gunman's actions with the political insults flying back and forth across America. That might change as we learn more about this atrocity. But for now it looks like the work of a single deranged individual with far too easy access to guns. America's gun culture, rather than its divisive discourse, might turn out to be the real villain, as it so often is when these mass shootings occur.

Second, the Coalition might like to take some comfort from the German economy, which grew at a rattling 3.6% in 2010. This is much better than our own performance of under 2% but the Coalition should be pleased because it shows that there is not necessarily a conflict between fiscal retrenchment and growth. The criticism of Coalition fiscal policy is that it is cutting the deficit too fast and too much, in a manner that jeopardises economic growth. But Germany's centre-right Coalition has also gone in for fiscal retrenchment too and its economy is roaring ahead.

Of course, Germany's robust recovery is export-led in a way Britain cannot match and could yet be derailed by the developing European sovereign debt crisis. But the German experience shows that the simple equations which have dominated our recent debate -- deficits = growth, cuts = stagnation -- are not necessarily true.

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