Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has blasted the Labour government for its poor preparations ahead of last year’s elections, which led to “ridiculous” decisions being made at least year’s £40bn tax grab in the Autumn Budget.
Speaking to LBC, Clegg said Labour had made promises it could not deliver as it struggled to balance the books, leaving the UK in a “perilous” position.
He suggested Labour’s manifesto commitments to not raise income tax, VAT or national insurance for employees’ were bad choices that left the government with little leeway in Budget planning.
“They pretended for 10 years there were no hard choices to make, and that is a deeply dishonest thing to do,” Clegg said.
“They fibbed to themselves and they fibbed to the British people.
“Then at the last minute they thought ‘oh, we might win, we better try and get the markets off our back, so let’s say that we’re not going to raise any of the big taxes’, which anyone could have told them was a foolish thing to do.”
“If you want to pluck the goose, you have to sometimes avail yourself of the big taxes that spread the burden evenly.”
Labour made ‘ridiculous decisions’
Clegg also said the government could have rowed back on some manifesto commitments after Trump’s election, with the
He said there was an opportunity for officials to have “persuaded the country” that U-turns on big manifesto commitments would have been able to be done “in view of changing circumstances”.
He slammed Labour for making “ridiculous decisions” on hiking employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) by £20bn.
“If you spend more money than you’ve got, it’s the next generation that bears the burden.
“We now have the highest long term debt costs of any rich country in the world – higher than in 2008.
“We’re going to spend around 10 per cent of our national income on just servicing our debts. That’s really perilous.”
Defence of austerity
The former Liberal Democrat leader, who left his position as president of global affairs at Meta earlier this year, said “no one should pretend” that austerity after the 2008 financial crash would not have been necessary.
“We were running out of money. We were borrowing too much money. Our economy had basically imploded, or the City of London had, which was very important to the British economy,” he said.
“We were literally just a poorer country generating less revenue, so anyone would have [had] to do it.
“Did we do it in exactly the right way? No, I think we cut capital spending too much.