Hollande fever strikes again in Nick Clegg’s interview with the FT this morning. ‘I personally massively welcome the arrival of Hollande on to the scene,’ he says, but it goes deeper than that. You see, the Deputy Prime Minister also places an emphasis on ‘growth’, as opposed to ‘austerity’, suggesting that the government might do more to get infrastructure projects up and running. When asked why they didn’t do this before, Clegg responds, ‘It’s for the obvious reason — because the economy is flatter than we anticipated two years ago.’
In some respects, this is unsurprising. Not only did Clegg deploy similar language in an interview with Der Speigel the other day, but the coalition has long tried to present a sunnier and, erm, growth-ier face to the nation. ‘We’re more than just accountants’; ‘We didn’t come into politics to cut public spending’; ‘We’re doing more than deficit reduction,’ — we’ve had these lines for ages. The message remains the same, even if the rhetoric now has a French accent.
Nevertheless, I’m intrigued by how far this Hollandery might go. Don’t forget, it’s not long since our credit rating was put on a negative outlook, so I doubt George Osborne — or Clegg, for that matter — thinks there’s much room for fiscal manoeuvre beyond some clever schemes here and there. But if the political rhetoric swings even further against austerity, then some MPs’ convictions may follow with it. And that could exacerbate what already threatens to be a bad-tempered spell for the coalition.
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