World

Archbishop gives Nazi warning to Brown

by LotusFlower | December 22, 2008 at 02:20 am

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After falling out with Gordon Brown last week when he likened Brown's return to public spending like an 'addict returning to drugs' the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned Brown to heed the lessons of the Third Reich when dealing with the economic downturn.

This will cause another bout of controversy for the Archbishop who is no stranger to it after his calls for the UK to consider adopting some aspects of Sharia law as part of family law and personal disputes earlier this year - his argument being that it was inevitable that with a growing Muslim population some aspects of Sharia law would be being practised informally so maybe better to formalise.

Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between Gordon Brown's response to the economic downturn and the Third Reich.

In an article for The Daily Telegraph, he claims Germany in the 1930s pursued a "principle" that worked consistently but only on the basis that "quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn't".

Dr Williams, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, then appears to draw a parallel between the Nazis and the UK Government's policies for tackling the downturn, which he says fails to take account of the "particular human costs" to the most vulnerable in society.

"What about the unique concerns and crises of the pensioner whose savings have disappeared, the Woolworth's employee, the hopeful young executive, let alone the helpless producer of goods in some Third-world environment where prices are determined thousands of miles away?" he asks.

In an apparent reference to the Prime Minister, who has claimed to be guided by a moral compass, the Archbishop also observes "without these anxieties about the specific costs, we've lost the essential moral compass".