It was the Gordon and Alistair show today, rather than the Brown press conference. And Darling did far more than the intro. He jumped into answer questions, with his message – that HMS Britain was built by Labour to weather a world economic storm. He detailed meetings with world leaders, as if to try and hammer home his point that innocent Britain is caught in a world economic problem, not our fault guv, etc. Anyway, here are five thoughts on each of them…
DARLING
1) “Right across the world, this will be a difficult year”. But few face a UK-style slowdown. The average OECD economy grew by 2.7% last year and is forecast to do 2.3% this year. No major country is facing a growth deceleration as sharp as Britain – from 3.1% to 2.0%.
2) “We are better placed than most other countries…” We would be if we didn’t have the largest budget deficit in Western Europe.
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