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One week to go, but there’s still no certain winner, or even clear leader, in the British election. Today, the leaders of the three main parties squared off in the last of three televised debates. This one’s on the British economy but it might not be that illuminating. That’s because all three candidates have been accused of not coming clean on the looming crisis in the nation’s finances. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. One week to go, but there’s still no certain winner, or even clear leader, in the British election. Tonight the leaders of the three main parties square off in the last of three televised debates. This one is on the British economy but it might not be that illuminating. That’s because all three candidates have been accused of not coming clean on the looming crisis in the nation’s finances. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.
LAURA LYNCH: Listen to the three main leaders on the campaign trail and see if you can spot the problem. First, Prime Minister Gordon Brown who claims to be the most qualified to steer Britain out of its economic troubles.
GORDON BROWN: We’ve got to move into a stronger recovery. That’s why all our policies are geared on making 2010 a strong recovery year.
LYNCH: Then Conservative Leader, David Cameron, trying to make a virtue out of the party’s plans to cut public spending.
DAVID CAMERON: I think we’ve gone further and faster than any opposition in British political history in saying here are tough things that need to be done. And also, we’ve said that we accept that is still not enough.
LYNCH: And finally, Nick Clegg, of the Liberal Democrats, claiming to be the best of a not very forthcoming bunch.
NICK CLEGG: Yes, of course, all political parties need to provide more detail on how we’re going to deal with this black hole in the public finances, but notwithstanding that, of the three main parties, we have provided more detail than the others on the steps that we’ve set up so far.
LYNCH: The problem is in the details, or more precisely, the lack of them. An independent think tank, The Institute for Fiscal Studies, says Britain is facing the deepest cuts to government in more than three decades. All the main parties have plans, but The Institute’s Robert Chote says something is missing.
ROBERT CHOTE: What’s really striking from the plans that the parties have set out is how little detail they’re giving of where the cuts in public spending are going to come from. They’re relying on those cuts to do most of the job.
LYNCH: Britain’s deficit has been ballooning as it struggles to deal with the fallout from the financial crunch. Equity fund manager, John Moulton, sees strong parallels with the 1970′s when the government had to turn to the IMF for assistance.
JOHN MOULTON: Well, at the moment, for every dollar the U.K. government gets, it spends one dollar thirty six. All we’re doing is borrowing and borrowing and borrowing.
LYNCH: Moulton too, laments the lack of specifics from the politicians.
MOULTON: That’s the extraordinary thing. The size of the hole we need to fill is somewhere not less than 80 billion dollars, real money. Nobody has come up with a way of dealing with that. We have to shrink the size of our state, or we have to tax our population truly to death, or, we have to let our currency collapse and inflate the debt away. All of these are pretty unattractive and nobody seems to have the political will to deal with it.
LYNCH: Those who work here in London’s financial district are savvier than most when it comes to the bottom line for the government. They may not like what’s ahead, but they want their politicians to at least own up to how bad it’s going to be.
MALE VOICE 1: Well I’d like them to be up front and not try and gloss it over. But I don’t think they’ll do that because it’s not in their nature.
FEMALE VOICE 1: I think everyone knows that cuts are coming and I think everyone has a fair idea in themselves, at least, within the financial services sector, what is going to be required.
FEMALE VOICE 2: I think it worries me that there are real systemic problems and I’m not sure any of them truly have the, don’t know if it’s guts, or the courage to really tackle what I think is at the base of so many of the problems.
LYNCH: Today it emerged that the governor of the Bank of England told and American economist that the election winner will have no choice but to impose severe cuts, ones that would make the government deeply unpopular, even unelectable. That may explain why there is little chance any of the three candidates will spell out specifics in tonight’s debate. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.
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