How ironic that the British government, the target of those original, outraged Boston Tea Party participants, could now become the darling of America's latter-day tea party revolutionaries. Britain's new Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition is about to undertake the kind of dramatic reduction in government spending that tea party activists in the colonies so desperately pine for.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has outlined a drastic plan to shrink his country's massive deficits. While additional tax revenues will play a part in the plan to balance the books, about 75 percent is to come from slashing government spending. Most government departments will cut spending by 25 percent.

Why would a party called the Liberal Democrats (tea party faithful in this country would consider that a redundant title) sign on to such a plan? Well, they won a couple of key concessions. Cameron promises to spare the national health care system from the budget bloodletting. And British citizens next year get to vote on changes to their voting system that the Libs say will give minor parties a better fighting chance in elections.

Still, the planned spending cuts are nothing short of radical. By 2014-15, according to the proposal, the deficit will fall from the current 11 percent of Gross Domestic Product in Britain to a meager 2.1 percent.

U.S. Republicans, and conservatives across the western world, will be watching this experiment. When Republicans last controlled the House, Senate and presidency during the Bush administration, they failed to walk the talk. Rather than slashing government as promised, they boosted spending, created a new massive bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security, fought a war "off budget" and went earmark wild. Given another chance down the road, would they really cut? Success or failure in Britain may provide the answer, much as Margaret Thatcher's fiscal conservatism in the late 1970s helped pave the way for Reaganomics in the 1980s. But even the Iron Lady never cut this deep.

Fiscal hawks say this tough love is exactly what's necessary to get economies moving again and avoid a fiscal calamity. Stop sucking money from the private sector, they cry. But Keynesian economists, who say more government spending, not less, is necessary to bolster a weak global economy, say this is the worst medicine and could pitch not-so-jolly old England back into a deep recession.

The Economist magazine, which endorsed the effort, also recognizes the potential dangers, noting that in some parts of Britain the state accounts for the bulk of the economy.

This is a gamble that will be fascinating to watch over the next couple of years.