THE BRITISH prime minister has moved to reclaim the political high ground as he placed tomorrow’s nervously awaited budget statement by chancellor Alistair Darling in the context of certain economic recovery.
Labour MPs returned to Westminster after a torrid Easter break, dominated by the row over former Downing Street aide Damien McBride’s suggested smear campaign against senior Conservative politicians.
Mr Brown meanwhile sought to refocus the national debate, suggesting that Britain was already in the process of “overcoming” the recession while promising his government would do everything possible to help businesses take advantage of emergent new opportunities.
“We have difficulties that we are overcoming, but we have also got enormous opportunities and challenges ahead,” Mr Brown declared at the launch of a new strategic plan for investment in Britain’s economic and industrial future: “Working together, we can meet and master every challenge”.
Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke dismissed the Labour government’s latest package as “worthy but meaningless waffle”, however, while Conservative leader David Cameron challenged Mr Brown to double-up with the local and European polls and call the general election for June 4th.
The latest ICM poll gives the Conservatives a 10-point lead, down two, suggesting Mr Brown may not have been as badly affected by the “smeargate” affair as two weekend polls suggested.
Before details of the Guardian poll emerged, however, Mr Cameron insisted he was not complacent, while declaring himself “ready” to battle Mr Brown for the keys to 10 Downing Street.
“I have been utterly consistent in the last 3½ years, whether I am 10 points ahead in the polls or 10 points behind . . . I have always said ‘Bring it on, let’s have the election’,” the Conservative leader told the Sun newspaper’s new Sun Talk internet radio service.
With unemployment expected to rise to a 3.25 million peak early next year and government borrowing this year and next expected to top £170 billion, Mr Cameron insisted he was serious in challenging Mr Brown to call the general election that must in any event be held in little more than a year’s time.
“There is a really serious reason for it,” he said. “As a nation we have got to take some really difficult decisions over the coming months about taxation and spending and the budget, and we need a government that is acting for the long term. We need a government that can wipe the slate clean.”
Driving home the advantage handed him by Mr Brown’s praetorian guard in the afterglow of the prime minister’s G20 success, Mr Cameron said: “Whether it is the stuff about smears or whatever, you can see that they [Labour] are thinking about the short term all the time. We need a government that has a five to 10-year horizon, not a five-minute horizon”.
Mr Brown was insistent that he was the man with the long-term vision, contrasting his policies with those of Mr Cameron. “We have got to invest out of this downturn. We can’t cut our way out of this downturn. We have got to invest.”
With the Bank of England already warning against any second, large-scale fiscal stimulus, however, Mr Darling is under pressure to start to slash public spending.
Reports yesterday suggested Mr Darling will demand some £15 billion in Whitehall efficiency savings, while one think-tank urged the chancellor to avoid any further tax rises and cut spending by twice as much.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, meanwhile, urged Mr Darling to abandon his “pointless” VAT cut and instead raise personal tax allowances for people on low and middle incomes.