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The Aim Of This Paper Is To Provide An Outline Of Some

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The aim of this paper is to provide an outline of some of the key features of George Osborne’s 2010 emergency budget speech and to provide a précis of the implications resulting from the measures contained within the budget. The result of the 2010 United Kingdom general election resulted in no single parliamentary majority and thus heralded the formation of the 2010 Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition government. In choosing to govern in partnership both party leaders declared that their respective political visions would be “strengthened and enhanced, rather than compromised, by working together”. Cameron and Clegg pledged radical reforms to facilitate the economic renewal of the U.K. in the policy publication, ‘The Coalition: Our …show more content…

For that reason the Coalition’s strategy was produced to create conditions for a private sector led growth, utilising rapid measures to cut the budget deficit, primarily by reducing public spending. The budget specified a £40 billion package of tax increases, welfare cuts and Whitehall spending restraints designed to slash the deficit by the end of the Parliament.

The government planned to borrow £452 billion over the lifetime of the Coalition, a move that would see the net public sector debt, at the end of March 2015, standing at £1284 billion or 69.4 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Thus the Coalition’s ‘unavoidable deficit reduction plan’ would focus on the reduction of public debt.

Osborne stressed the coalition inherited the largest budget deficit of any economy in Europe with the exception of Ireland. As far back as 2008 Cameron had slated the Labour government, famously accusing them of ‘not fixing the roof when the sun was shining’ a point Osborne highlighted in his speech, accusing Labour of not abiding by Gordon Brown’s ‘golden rule’ on fiscal policy. Labour, he stated, had failed, in the good years, to set aside money to allow them to borrow sustainably in economic downturns. The Coalition would not make the mistakes of Labour, and outlined their mandate as being – structural, to provide flexibility in response to external shocks; current to protect productive public

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