Both sides of the story ...

I have been increasingly irritated by the way journalists and commentators - particularly on the BBC - keep referring to the government shutdown in the USA as if it were entirely the fault of the Tea Party.

There are two sides to every story and in particular it takes two sides to have a deadlock.

I don't necessarily support the position the hardline republicans in the US have taken, though I agree that they are right to be concerned at the size of their deficit and debt just as sensible people on this side of the atlantic are still very concerned about the size of hours. To suggest that either side has a monopoly of the blame for the situation strikes me as "dumbing down" your reporting and opens you to charges of bias.

Now I do not support the Tea Party - if I were an American citizen and had the guts to stick to this position I would probably be a either a member of that increasingly endangered species, a moderate Republican, or a floating voter.

As someone who is economically on the centre right (what we call an economic liberal and on the other side of the pond they call an economic conservative) I would have serious problems with the economic policies of most Democrat candidates, but as a social liberal, and despite being a christian myself, I have serious problems with some of the off-the-wall policies of the so-called "religious right."

Nevertheless, they are right to be worried about the US budget.

It has sometimes been quite extraordinary to watch the interplay between British Conservatives and US republicans, and between Labour in Britain and US Democrats. Labour Prime Ministers in Britain usually get on very well with a Democrat US President, and British Conservative Prime Ministers usually get on very well with a Republican President.

But because office tends to push British Prime Ministers of whatever party into working hard to maintain good relations with the US President of the day, even if he or she is of the opposite party, when the political cycles in the two countries are out of sync that often puts extreme pressure on the relations between the opposition party in each country and their sister party in power in the other.

The most recent example was Ed Miliband's position re Syria, but there are many others - Mitt Romney's comments on the Olympics and the NHS being another. The most extreme case was the consequences of the extraordinarly lockstep between Tony Blair and George W Bush. This wasn't exactly the most popular of Blair's policies in his own party, but it also made it almost impossible for some Conservative leaders to maintain their normal good relations with US republicans.

There were certain American republican leaders, who were not noted for their high opinion of Bill Clinton, who could not understand why asking the British Conservatives to go easy on Tony Blair should cause massive offence. They just didn't get that the most significant differences between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were that Tony has a British passport and is faithful to his wife.