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  1. Politics
13 January 2011

Exclusive: Vince Cable – “Keynes would be on our side”

Cable argues in this week’s New Statesman that the famous economist would back the coalition’s econo

By Duncan Robinson

In an exclusive essay published in this week’s New Statesman, the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, discusses the ideological battle between left and right over John Maynard Keynes’s legacy – and why Keynes would back the coalition’s policies.

Cable argues that knee-jerk opposition to the cuts will not suit the long-term causes of the left. “If the British left follows Bob Crow and the National Union of Students to the promised land of the big spenders, it will enjoy short-term popularity at the expense of the coalition but it will also enter an intellectual and political blind alley,” writes Cable.

The cuts that the coalition is making are not a matter of choice. “For all the protesters shouting ‘No to cuts’, this electoral term would always have been about public-sector austerity, no matter who won the election,” Cable argues.

“The outgoing Labour government was already planning a fiscal tightening of 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2010/2011,” he writes. “The difference between its deficit reduction plan beyond 2010/2011 and that of the coalition amounts to roughly half a per cent of GDP per annum: well within the forecasting error.”

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The rhetoric of anti-cuts protesters is overblown, says Cable. “Such differences, though not trivial, hardly justify the titanic clash of economic ideas advertised in the commentaries or a threatened mobilisation of opposition comparable to the General Strike.”

This week’s New Statesman is available on news-stands from today. You can subscribe here.

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