British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is completing a month in office this week, on Monday again warned over drastic spending cuts facing the country and blamed the previous Labour government for the perilous state of government finances.
Making a speech in Milton Keynes on the state of British economy with new treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander, Mr Cameron warned that the spending cuts and the huge deficit, which “is even worse than we thought,” will change the way of life in the UK.
“How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society — indeed our whole way of life,” Mr Cameron said. “The decisions we make will affect every single person in our country. And the effects of those decisions will stay with us for years, perhaps decades, to come.”
“It is precisely because these decisions are so momentous, because they will have such enormous implications, and because we cannot afford either to duck them or to get them wrong that I want to make sure we go about the urgent task of cutting our deficit in a way that is open, responsible and fair,” Mr Cameron said and put all the blame for the state of economy on the Labour government.
The Labour economy was based on a boom in immigration, which at one point accounted for a fifth of annual economic growth, Mr Cameron said. “But this was unsustainable because it’s just not possible to keep bringing more and more people into our country to work while at the same time leaving millions of people to live a life on welfare.”
Mr Cameron, whose government will present an emergency budget in a fortnight, used Greek financial crisis as an example of how things could go wrong in the UK.
“Our debts are not as bad as Greece. Our underlying economic position is stronger. And crucially we now have a government that has already demonstrated its willingness — and ability — to deal with the problem. But Greece stands as a warning of what happens to countries that lose their credibility, or whose governments pretend that difficult decisions can be avoided,” he said.
Mr Cameron vowed to make Britain stronger. “I make this promise to everyone in Britain: you will not be left on your own in this. We are all in this together, and we will get through this together. We will carry out Britain’s unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country,” he said.