LONDON – Britain’s coalition partners will provide a lasting, stable government that will take early action to cut the country’s record budget deficit, according to prime minister David Cameron.
Mr Cameron, who took power this week after 13 years of Labour rule, said yesterday he would be able to maintain his powersharing deal with the smaller Liberal Democrats despite the pressing need for public spending cuts and tax rises.
Political rivals, analysts and even some within Mr Cameron’s party have raised concerns the two sides’ political views are too far apart for the coalition to succeed.
However Mr Cameron, who travelled to Scotland where his party has only a single MP, said his alliance with the Liberal Democrats would defy the sceptics and grow in strength during its scheduled five-year term.
“I think having a government that can last for five years with two parties who have put aside their differences for the national interest and the common good raises exciting possibilities for our whole nation of trying to solve our big challenges, confront our big problems and actually provide good, strong, stable government,” he told reporters in Edinburgh.
Former Tory deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine predicted the inevitable cuts would cause “terrible strains” in the coalition. “We are living in a false dawn,” he was reported as saying in the Independent newspaper. “The sun is shining. It is not going to last very long . . . there is a rocky road ahead.”
The coalition’s most pressing task is to cut the budget deficit running at more than 11 per cent of GDP. Britain is emerging from the worst recession since the second World War but the new government is under pressure to reduce public spending and raise taxes to balance the books.
On Wednesday, Bank of England governor Mervyn King backed the coalition’s fiscal plans but said urgent action was needed.
“The governor of the Bank of England this week gave the clearest possible sign that the dangers of inaction were much greater than the dangers of action,” Mr Cameron said.
Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne is expected to set out tax and spending plans in an emergency budget in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, on his first trip abroad since being appointed to head the foreign office, William Hague said the US was “without doubt the most important ally of the UK” and welcomed President Barack Obama’s description of the “extraordinary special relationship” between the two countries.
In a joint press conference in Washington following talks dominated by Afghanistan, Iran and the economic crisis in the euro zone, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she was “very intrigued” by the outcome of last week’s election. She said the Obama administration was looking forward to “working with the new British government”. – (Reuters)