Osbourne says Brown has no answers to economic problems of the 21st Century |
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Wed, 22 Jun 2005 06:35
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The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, today launched a scathing attack on his counterpart, Chancellor Gordon Brown and said that he has no answers to the economic problems of the 21st Century.
He alleged that it was because of Mr. Brown's senseless expenditures that Britain was heading "in the opposite direction of the rest of the developed world."
Speaking in an interview to a private TV channel, Mr. Osbourne said, "We need to slow the growth of public expenditure. I also think we may need to look at a more competitive low-tax corporate environment, because the rest of the world is reducing its business taxes and we need to compete with the rest of the world. We also need a broader economic policy that does something about skills, about our transport infrastructure and issues like energy and encouraging new technologies like stem-cell research."
| A dismal showing by the economy with poor budget deficit figures for the first two months of this financial year mean that Gordon Brown is under immense pressure to raise taxes in order to balance the books over the economic cycle, Mr. Osbourne pointed out.
"At a time when almost every other developed country in the world is reducing taxes to meet the big competitive challenges of China, India and the flat-tax revolution in Eastern Europe, we are heading in the exact opposite direction to the rest of the developed world. I think we are going to start to pay the price for that. Gordon Brown may have had the answers to the economic problems of the 1990s but I don't think he has got the answers for the 21st century," Mr. Osbourne observed.
Asked about the direction in which his party was heading, Mr. Osbourne said, "Sometimes it looks as if the Conservative Party produces tax cuts like a white rabbit out of a hat just before polling day. Actually, what we need to do is to have a broad economic policy in which tax plays its part. We should be engaged in these long-term challenges facing the country in the global economy. I think it looks as though what is happening in my party at the moment is that there is a bit too much navel-gazing and talking about ourselves and yet out there in the real world there are enormous challenges facing us all. If the Conservative Party engages in those challenges and shows that it has got answers to the problems of the future, instead of hankering about the past, then we can show that this government is outdated and running out of steam."
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