LONDON: Like injured England soccer star Wayne Rooney, Britain’s economy must be nursed gently back to health and Conservative plans to cut spending this year will put a frail recovery at risk, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
Brown, who is expected to call on Tuesday for an election to be held on May 6, seized on the soccer analogy to explain why his Labour government is against public spending cuts this year despite a record budget deficit.
The opposition Conservatives, ahead in opinion polls, say they will reduce spending by six billion pounds this year if they win the election to fulfil a pledge to go further than Labour, which envisages halving the deficit over four years. The Conservatives, who warn that Britain’s top credit rating and long-term recovery are at risk without tough action on the deficit, said on Monday they would not need any further tax increases beyond those already pencilled in by Labour.
Manchester United striker Rooney, recovering from damaged ankle ligaments, is top scorer in this season’s English premier league and carries the hopes of England fans in the soccer World Cup, which kicks off in South Africa in June. Like Rooney’s coaches, Brown said, policymakers should not force the economy to “jump off the treatment table as if nothing had happened.
“I know Wayne Rooney’s just had an injury to his foot and I know everyone will be hoping he’s fit for the World Cup,” Brownsaid in a video message on his Downing Street website on Monday. “But after an injury you need support to recover, you need support to get back to match fitness, you need support to get back your full strength and then go on to lift the World Cup.”
Brown is an experienced policymaker but lacks his predecessor Tony Blair’s charm. He has faced ridicule for previous attempts to depict himself as an ordinary guy. But the Rooney comparison may hit home with many voters who feel disenfranchised by politics following a parliamentary expenses scandal and sidelined by academic arguments about budget deficits and credit ratings. Britain’s budget deficit has soared close to 12 percent of gross domestic product this year, comparable with crisis-hit Greece and just shy of 170 billion pounds ($259 billion).
Campaigning for the election under such a heavy debt burden has forced politicians to try to balance the competing needs of voters who want to see costly, frontline public services protected and financial markets eager for bigger deficit cuts. Brown said the economy was “not back to full fitness” and withdrawing government support too early was risky.
“That’s why I think it’s wrong to say that we should take six or seven billion pounds out of the economy this year,” he said. Conservative economics spokesman George Osborne, most likely to be finance minister in a Conservative administration, said concentrating the bulk of any deficit reduction on spending cuts meant that he could partly reverse a planned payroll tax rise. Osborne told BBC radio that such a tax would hamper a recovery in business activity, which must pick up to ensure sustainable economic growth in the future. He said he had no plans to raise VAT sales tax, as some have speculated.
“The priority is to sustain the recovery and the way you sustain the recovery is to make a start dealing with the deficit,” Osborne said. Financial markets have treated both parties’ deficit plans with scepticism because they lack specifics on spending cuts.
Investors are most concerned that the election could result in a hung parliament, where no one party has overall control, which could slow down any attempts to bring down government borrowing.
Source The News
No comments:
Post a Comment