Oh dear, Ambrose. Not again. In a splash of gloom today, journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, declares that Kemi Badenoch has aligned herself with a “dreadful role model” in Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding, Hayek-quoting libertarian president of Argentina.
Apparently, citing Argentina’s recent economic revival is now a sign of Tory derangement.
But surely even the Telegraph’s international business editor can spot the difference between media caricature and macroeconomic reality. Or has the fog of Westminster finally made Argentina look like the enemy, and stagnating Britain the sane one?
Let’s take a moment to separate hysteria from hard data.
What Milei Inherited
Milei stepped into office in December 2023 with 200% annual inflation, no net foreign reserves, a 5% budget deficit, and a collapsed currency. Argentina was, again, an economic corpse wrapped in the flag of Peronist populism.
This wasn’t just a mess. It was an institutionalised disaster caused by decades of subsidy-fueled fantasy economics peddled by the same technocratic Keynesians who’ve been whispering sweet nonsense into the ears of the West for decades. Ambrose included.
What Milei Has Actually Done
Inflation down. Budget balanced. Growth returning.
In less than a year:
- Monthly inflation has plunged from over 25% to around 1.5%, on par with G7 economies.
- The budget is now in surplus – the first in nearly two decades.
- The peso has stabilised, foreign reserves are up, and Argentina’s bond spreads have narrowed significantly.
- GDP is growing again, with Q4 2024 marking a 3.9% expansion and more forecast in 2025.
That’s not magic. That’s textbook economics done ruthlessly right.
Did it come with pain? Of course. But was that pain necessary after years of economic malpractice? Also yes.
Would Britain benefit from the same backbone in public policy? Undoubtedly.
Is This the “Cult” of Milei — or a Hard Reset?
Ambrose calls Milei’s ideology a “cult,” then reels off a list of policies: cutting deficits, freeing energy prices, slashing waste, simplifying regulation, that wouldn’t look out of place in a Margaret Thatcher lecture series.
This isn’t a cult. It’s classical economics with courage.
You can sneer at cloned dogs and chainsaw badges all you like, but Argentina has done more to restore macroeconomic sanity in the last year than Europe has in 20. Milei has trimmed the fat, restored market confidence, and actually told the truth to his people… something most Western leaders abandoned years ago.
Debt? Loans? Spin?
Ambrose decries the IMF loan package as if it were an ideological bribe from Trumpworld. He forgets this is Argentina’s 23rd IMF deal because every previous government (soaked in state largesse) failed to take real medicine.
This time is different. Why? Because the medicine is being swallowed. That’s why the IMF, the World Bank, and even skeptical investors are finally opening the taps again.
Is there risk? Of course. But to call Milei a “dangerous adventurist” while ignoring the suicidal entitlement economics of the Peronist left is either naïve or disingenuous.
Britain Could Use a Bit of Buenos Aires
Kemi Badenoch’s admiration for Milei is not just defensible… it’s visionary and it’s needed.
The UK is currently trapped in a fog of declining productivity, bloated bureaucracy, economic illiteracy, and a cowardly political class terrified of reform. Argentina, under Milei, is charging full-speed out of the ditch while Britain debates how many electric buses it takes to offset a coal-powered power station in China.
Let’s be blunt: Ambrose and his cohort of economic forecasters have been wrong for 30 years. Many of them cheered China’s WTO entry, downplayed the eurozone’s structural flaws, ignored the inflation time-bomb post-Covid, and now they’re sneering at the first real reformer Argentina’s had since the fall of the junta.
They are the priests of Net Zero growth, champions of managed decline. And they’ve left us with stagnant wages, mass indebtedness, and a nation that can’t build a railway in under three decades.
The Future Belongs to the Brave
Argentina, under Milei, may not be perfect. No serious observer would claim it is. But it is moving, improving, and outgrowing the false economic dogmas that have held back nations for too long.
If anything is embarrassing, it’s not Kemi Badenoch’s admiration for Milei, it’s the smug disbelief of British commentators who mistake cynicism for wisdom and decline for prudence.
It’s time we stop mocking reformers and start asking: Why aren’t we brave enough to be like them?
And as for Ambrose: click on his own archive. He missed the euro crisis, dismissed Brexit’s resilience, misunderstood Covid economics, and now he’s betting against the one man in Latin America who’s finally getting the numbers right.
We need better from our business editors. Not more groupthink.
Main Image: President of Argentina Javier Milei speaking at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore. Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Wikimedia. Image of Kemi Badenoch: Roger Harris – https://members.parliament.uk/member/4597/portrait
