LONDON: The two contenders to win Britain’s national election next year traded blows over their business policies yesterday after finance minister George Osborne accused the opposition Labour party of “pulling up the drawbridge” on foreign investment.
Labour said Osborne was guilty of hypocrisy, arguing that his own Conservative party’s promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union by the end of 2017 was spooking business by raising the prospect of a “Brexit”. The clash reflects an emerging trend. With only a few percentage points separating the two parties in the opinion polls, both are trying to persuade the business community that they have the better policies for the economy.
Osborne, in a speech at the Confederation of British Industry, will say Britain’s economy is recovering, but that his decade-long plan to fix it is less than half-completed. His speech, which his office previewed to reporters, comes on the eve of elections to the European Parliament and takes aim at both Labour and the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants Britain to leave the European Union.
“Political parties on the left and the populist right have this in common: they want to pull up the drawbridge and shut Britain off from the world,” Osborne will say, according to extracts of his speech.
“It takes advantage of the understandable anxieties of a population unsettled by the pace of globalisation, and peddles a myth that Britain can stop the world and get off.” Labour rejected that, pointing the finger back at the Conservatives, arguing that their plan to hold a referendum on leaving the European Union if they win next year’s election was causing huge uncertainty. “The biggest threat to British business would be walking away from our biggest market — the European Union,” said Labour spokesman Chris Leslie. Reuters
