AS Bermuda braces for the expected downturn of its economy resulting from the worldwide economic crisis, it has become increasingly clear to me what is hindering the United Bermuda Party from regaining public confidence and putting itself on the flight path that will one day allow it to regain control of the Government.

The chief impediment blocking a UBP resurgence has nothing to do with race, as it is widely believed and touted. Rather it has everything to do with whether or not the UBP really has the national interests of Bermudians at heart. Though the Opposition often make statements that leads one to believe that this is so, every so often the mask slips revealing where their real concerns lies.

"The new ID cards for expats scheme smacks very heavily of Nazi Germany", states the Shadow Finance Minister Bob Richards. Oh really? If this economic dislocation really begins to bite and Bermudians are faced with deepening unemployment, the social unrest accompanying such circumstances will the ID card scheme for guest workers pale into insignificance by comparison.

Bermuda by and large has been very tolerant of the presence (about 30 percent) of foreign economic migrantsin our workforce.

You can just imagine what the political consequences would be in some of the countries we have close links with if they were faced with such a high level of foreigners working in their country.

The United States, for instance, includes as part of its national creed the statement, "Bring me your tired, the huddled masses yearning to be free". Yet in the southwest of that country they are building walls and fences to keep out the very same.

In addition the US border control has employed all manner of high-tech surveillance equipment to keep track of and block thousands who seek another life in illegally working in America.

Even Britain is contemplating requiring all of its citizens to carry ID cards so that it will be more easy to identify who has the right to be in the country and who does not. In addition, Britain is closing more and more job categories to foreigners. To achieve what? To protect the job prospects of their own citizens.

As regards a global economic downturn and its possible ramifications on Bermuda, Home Affairs Minister David Burch has referred to what he describes as the "iPod generation", the young people who have never experienced a recession and who are hardly prepared for the worse case scenario the threat of a full-scale economic depression.

The Minister spoke of the need for their parents to prepare them for such an eventuality. Well, I don't know it seems as if the older generation has forgotten about those times when things were not as rosy economically as they have been in recent years.

Even now, despite the imminent threat of an economic downturn overseas shopping trips have not been cancelled and despite the high cost of food these days those shopping carts in the supermarkets are still runneth over with excess.

One major indicator of the state of affairs in Bermuda today is the rising level of personal debt and the inability of more and more people to pay it off. We have a lot more in common with our American neighbours in this regard than is generally admitted.

The same is true of Government, which has engaged in more and more deficit financing and increased borrowing in recent years.

But given the global picture, I'd like to know what a PLP Government can do in the current circumstances. What would the UBP and other PLP detractors have our Government do? Even if the UBP was the Government could things be done any other way?

When we talk about Government cutbacks, we are talking largely about the elimination of Government assistance programmes and related public works schemes that keep people employed - and which keeps cash in their bank accounts.

As was pointed out in a discussion with some friends I had recently, Government only has one bird flying over the City all the rest are being bankrolled by private enterprises. I am talking, of course, about the building project involving the new courts and police station.

This public works project is stimulating the economy and keeping workers employed who might not otherwise find be able to find work in a contracting economy. And, of course, the new amenities, when completed, will add to Hamilton's infrastructure. So Government can't just be expected to cut, cut, cut. The consequences of doing so always have to be taken into consideration.

Government always has to walk a thin line when it comes to economic policies because rash action might only further exacerbate a potentially grim situation.

Bermuda has to effectively hurry up and wait when it comes to any major economic decisions. We like to talk about our tourist industry and our international business concerns, but in reality, even though we provide a certain level of infrastructure for these entities to operate in, they do not really belong to Bermuda.

We have to depend on foreign investment ownership in this regard. This reality should give us pause to reflect on the real state of affairs as far as our economy is concerned. We delude ourselves if we think we are any more than being in a symbiotic relationship with outside economic interests - with us being by far the weaker of the two mutually dependent partners.

It is interesting to observe some of the repercussions of the economic downturn currently taking place internationally. For instance, the so-called richer, developed countries have had to bring in newly emerging economic players to help coordinate recovery efforts as we saw at the recent economic summit meeting in Washington. Most of those on the guest list had never been invited to such a high-level conference before: normally such matters are the sole preserve of the Group of Seven (G7) economic powerhouses - the US, Canada, Japan, Great Britain, Italy, Germany and France.

But last weekend in Washington we saw the Western countries joined by the likes of the emerging economic superpowers China, India and Brazil. Also in attendance were the oil rich states of the Middle East and others, some 20 countries in all. The rich West has finally been forced to accept that they can't manage or fix the world economy alone.

In the wake of the recent economic upheavals even such financial gurus as former head of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, have admitted, in the face of what he called a "once in a century credit tsunami", that he was wrong about the supposedly always resilient prospects of a free market economy.

He has joined a host of other free enterprise high priests who seem to be at a loss as to what to do to bring to heel the economic beast that they have previously put so much faith in. As the world's leading model for economic development, President Bush was at great pains to declare at the recent economic summit that free enterprise and capitalism is not dead. He may well be right. But don't expect the capitalist system to be off government life support in terms of new regulatory regimes, cash bail-outs and other emergency measures any time in the immediate future.

All and all interesting times to be alive, very interesting times indeed.