Sarkozy insults PM's economic policies
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
enlarge
Gordon Brown is heading for a showdown with Nicolas Sarkozy after the French President scorned his handling of the economic crisis.
Mr Sarkozy provoked anger in Downing Street when he vowed not to repeat Mr Brown's "mistakes" and dismissed as a failure his decision to cut the rate VAT in an effort to stimulate spending.
Officials at the Elysée Palace sought to smooth over the diplomatic row after Britain protested about the comments, but the Prime Minister's spokesman made clear the Government's deep irritation over the incident. He said: "The Elysée have been in contact this morning to assure us that these remarks were not meant as a critique of UK economic policy – which is nice."
The spokesman also suggested that Mr Sarkozy, who made a high-profile state visit to Britain with his wife Carla last year, was playing to a domestic audience with his remarks.
The two men will meet later this month at a gathering of EU leaders to discuss their response to the deepening recession. Downing Street officials indicated Mr Brown would challenge the French President over his remarks.
The comments are a severe blow to the Prime Minister's argument that he is building international consensus for his blueprint for tackling the global downturn. He has also regularly charged David Cameron, the Tory leader, of being out of step with world opinion over combating the recession.
Mr Sarkozy's outburst came in a 90-minute interview carried on three French television channels. He said: "Gordon Brown's decision to cut VAT has absolutely not worked. Cutting VAT by two points doesn't incite people to buy if they are scared about their own future. If anything, consumption in Britain has gone down."
Challenged last night over his plans to boost the economy by infrastructure spending rather than tax cuts, he responded: "Britain is cutting taxes. That will bring them nothing. Consumption continues to decrease in Britain."
His broadside against the cut in VAT from 17.5 to 15 per cent touched a raw nerve for the Prime Minister, coming just days after Wouter Bos, the Dutch Finance Minister, derided the VAT cut as "not a very wise thing to do".
Germany has also rejectedcutting sales taxes and its Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, accused Mr Brown of "crass Keynesianism".
Downing Street insisted that it was too early to judge the effect of the reduced VAT rate, which will apply until the end of the year, pointing to a study that suggested it could boost spending levels by 1.2 per cent during 2009.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
President Sarkozy may be well be the pot calling the kettle black. In common with all international leaders in politics and business, he and Mr Brown are feeling their way out of this mess like a blind man with a stick.
The economic status quo of the past 30 years is unravelling before our eyes. It is riddled with greed, corruption and mindless ideology. We need new economic and political leadership. Silly spats like this are of no consequence.
The UK economy can only boom if it continues to borrow more money than it creates. Over the last 4 or 5 years the UK economy has expanded simply because there was easy access to cheap credit.
Brown has definitely abolished the "boom and bust" culture and replaced it with a "sustained boom and sustained bust" economic culture.
Sarkozy is a clever guy - he's made it clear early on that Europe will not bail the UK out of it's debt culture.
Considering that Brown hankered after the top job for 10 years, it is a delicious irony that he finally succeeded in becoming Prime Minister just as the sh*t was about to hit the fan, especially when one considers that as Chancellor he did more than anyone else to create the domestic crisis. The man is a total moron.
It's also worth noting that whilst Clarkson apologised for his 'one eyed' jibe, he didn't apologise for calling Brown an idiot, or Scottish. It must be true; bad luck does come in threes.
Brown tells us this is a different type of recession,so he must understand that the fall in demand is not price(inflation) but expenditure driven by debt cost and spikes in commodities.The consumer gets it there is a need to rebalance household budgets.So against that why Vat either he doesn't understand or is proving Clarkson right.It is clear this is all about money and confidence fiscal action is a secondary tool probably about confidence and therefore comes after the money bit.We are in danger of needing the money printers and having a vat stimulus at the same time will add further risk.I thank Sarkosy and others including the IMf senior economist for pointing out that this doesn't work and may be his biggest grandstanding and rush to get in first mistake
It does not take much to work out that the vat reduction would do nothing to encourage people to spend what they haven't got. Everyone knew, everyone except Gordon.
The way we are going we may end up bankcrupt , France & Germany could well have to bale us out..So Mr Brown you could end up as the worst PM this island has ever had,,,FOOL
Ha, ha, ha. You've got to be joking! After we've been bailing out France's bloated farming sector for decades. Who are you going to get to pay for it (and all your other European 'grands projets') if that happens, eh? Time we stopped allowing France to fiddle the EU system with its trade barriers and hidden subsidies.
France may have much better public services, but French industrial production was 7% lower than in 2000 in November 2008 (http://www.insee.fr/en/themes/theme.as
Sarko is the first French President to attempt to break that cycle. So, no - I'm not joking. Sarko is very clued up and has one 1 major advantage over Brown - Brown has just over 1 year before he needs to call an election - Sarko has 3.5
Those of us who are British subjects have to bow to the will of a very powerful Executive, but Sarko doesn't. He's quite at liberty to point out the flaws in Brownian economics and take his country on a divergent course from the Orwellian dystopia which finger-wagging New Labour has created in the UK. Whether this dystopia ends up impoverished remains to be seen.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor
So much for the entente cordial.
On the fallout of state bankruptcy here's an informative Spiegel article:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor