Nick Clegg proves once again how short his memory is
According to Nick Clegg, ‘Britain is not Greece, but it could have been’. Writing for The Telegraph on Saturday, the deputy prime minister claimed that coalition policies had saved the UK from the fate of Greece.
“As Greece slipped into chaos [in 2010], the markets were looking at us and wondering if we would be the next domino to fall.
“It could have been us, but it wasn’t because the Liberal Democrats stepped up to the plate. We took a deliberate decision – at some political cost – to put the national interest first and form a new kind of government. A strong, stable coalition government capable of rescuing the economy.
“What Britain needed, what Greece desperately lacked, was stability: a government that people at home and abroad would trust to take the difficult decisions necessary to turn the economy round. That was no sure thing, but we did it.”
Interestingly, Clegg has used the Greek comparison before. Shortly before the elections in 2010, he held Greece up as an example of what would happen if the government tried to ‘ram through’ spending cuts without public consent. Warning of Athens-style unrest if the Tories made their planned cuts, he said:
“If we do not find a way to take the people of Britain with us on this difficult journey of deficit reduction, we will not be able to make the journey. We will instead follow Greece down the road to economic, political and social disruption.”
It seems that the Lib Dem leader has had a drastic change of heart about what’s best for the Greeks.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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4 Responses to “Nick Clegg in 2010: ‘Cuts to turn UK into Greece’. In 2015: ‘Cuts saved UK from being Greece’”
Cole
As we all know, Clegg will say anything to get votes – and he’s a desperate man.
sarntcrip
IF ONLY WE HAD THE BALLS FOR A BACKLASH!
Caracatus
I dislike Nick Clegg and he has contradicted himself on lots of things but not this. Without a coalition, spending cuts, (which lets not forget Labour promised cuts to half the deficit and the coalition has only cut it by 1/3)
would have led to massive unrest on the street. Making the cuts also prevented a Greek style debt crisis – when a country owes 175 of its GDP it is in trouble – whatever your view of economics.
Guest
So you think that slashing out GDP and having an artifical depression “saved” us from the terrible scourge of paying off more of the debt and having a lower debt – as you say that a lower debt means we’d have a “Greek Style” crisis…I see.
Not to mention we have a fiat currency, and too-low inflation.
Thanks, Tory, keep defending shrinking the GDP and increasing poverty. How much have you dropped your workers’s wages?