Downing Street has responded to Vince Cable’s dramatic intervention in the New Statesman by seeking to paint the Business Secretary as a lone maverick and Nick Clegg has just come to their aid. On his phone-in show on LBC this morning, the Deputy PM said of Cable’s call for the government to borrow for growth:
If you do decide to say: ‘to hell with it, let’s borrow £40bn – £20bn’ –huge amounts of money – because there is no point doing it unless you do it on a big scale – there are risks of course, and I know Vince acknowledges it, you unwittingly make it more difficult for everyone else because interest rates might then go up.
He added: “The question is not whether capital investment is a good thing – everyone in the coalition agrees that – but how do you pay for it? This is where the balance of judgment is; you need to balance the risk.”
While Cable argues that the risks of borrowing to invest are now outweighed by the risks of not doing so, Clegg has stuck firmly to the Cameron-Osborne line that deficit-financed stimulus would cause a spike in interest rates.
Clegg’s intervention is helpful for Labour as well as the Tories. Team Balls responded to Cable’s essay by similarly portraying the Business Secretary as an isolated figure. “His words today read like they have been written by a Secretary of State who despite being in office, is not in power,” said shadow financial secretary Chris Leslie. Clegg’s rebuke to Cable means Balls and Miliband can continue to argue that only Labour is offering a genuine plan B.
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