Economists' letter warms Tory hearts
Monday, 15 February 2010 12:00 AM
By politics.co.uk staff
A letter from 20 of the leading economists in the country has corroborated the Conservative position on the budget deficit.
In an intervention which will have pleased Tory HQ, the 20 economists wrote a letter to the Sunday Times yesterday calling for spending reduction in 2010-11 and attempts to reduce the structural deficit at a faster pace than that outlined in the Pre-Budget Report last year.
"The economists say that there is a compelling case for making a start in 2010 - that is exactly what David Cameron and I have been saying all along," George Osborne, shadow chancellor, said on the Today programme this morning.
But chancellor Alistair Darling appeared on the programme minutes later to disagree with him.
"I will take what they say on its merits, but I disagree with them," Mr Darling said.
"What they're saying is they think after the next election the government should go further and faster - my judgement is that halving the deficit over four years is the right one."
He went on to criticise the position of his shadow, George Osborne, on spending saying: "You don't know where he is from one day to the next... that inconsistency is very damaging."
The letter recognises the potential danger of threatening the recovery - the Labour case against immediate cuts - but stresses that there is a "compelling case, all else being equal, for the first measures beginning to take effect in the 2010-11 fiscal year".
The authors of the letter include Lord Desai, a Labour peer, Ken Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Sir Howard Davies, former deputy governor of the Bank of England and Lord Turnbull, former cabinet secretary.
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