by Scott Wood, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Sedgefield Constituency.
In May 2012 Ed Miliband met President Hollande after his victory in the French Presidential elections. Mr Miliband congratulated the President and said; “This new leadership is sorely needed as Europe seeks to escape from austerity…. He has shown that the centre left can offer hope and win elections with a vision of a better, more equal and just world”.
Unfortunately what Mr Miliband said has turned out to be incorrect. Austerity is the reason the UK economy has improved, despite repeated warnings from the Labour Party that it would not, while the French economy has gone downhill. Mr Miliband backed the wrong horse here and the British public are intelligent enough to see that the British economy is performing a great deal better than that of France.
Mr Miliband’s economic statements betray someone who is not up to running the British economy and would put at risk all the achievements made since May 2010.
Let us compare the economic data from both countries.
• Government spending in France is 56% of GDP. In Britain it is 40% and is planned to be reduced to 35.2% by the end of the next Parliament.
• President Hollande promised the French electorate in 2012, that the budget would be eliminated by 2017, this will not happen. In Britain should we elect a Conservative Government, the projection is that the budget deficit will become a surplus in 2018.
• President Hollande raised top rate tax to 75% on all salaries above 1 million Euros. The top rate of tax in Britain is 45%
• The President restored the retirement age in France to 60 years. The Coalition Government took the difficult decision to increase the retirement age for the British people.
• The President restored 60,000 public sector workers (in the Education Sector) while Britain has created 1.85 million private sector jobs and reduced the public sector payroll by 412,000.
• The French are breaking EU rules imposed on member states.
• The unemployment rate in France in January 2015 was 10.3% in Britain it is 5.9% (and decreasing faster than any other G7 country over the past year)
• It is predicted that the British economy will soon overtake that of France to become the 2nd largest in Europe after Germany.
If the British electorate wish to keep up this economic recovery they should vote for a Conservative Government on May 7th. To return a Labour government would put at risk the hard earned recovery we are currently experiencing.
