“Nick Clegg vows no return to savage cuts of the Thatcher years”

So reports The Observer, writing up its interview with Nick Clegg:

In an interview with the Observer, he launched a withering attack on the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and promised instead to look to the examples of Sweden, Canada and the US to deliver “progressive” cuts.

“It is important that people understand that fiscal retrenchment does not mean a repeat of the 1980s. We’re going to do this differently,” said Clegg, in a move that risks angering MPs on the Conservative right, many of whom admire their former leader. The deputy prime minister said he would use his authority “ruthlessly” to make sure coalition commitments were met …

Clegg argued that some of the biggest cuts programmes across the world in recent decades had been carried out by “centre-left governments”, including “the social democrats in Sweden, the Clinton administration [in the US] and the Liberals in Canada”.

He promised that while his party was part of the coalition there would be protection for the country’s poorest areas, including his own constituency in south Yorkshire. “We’re not going to allow a great north-south divide to reappear,” he said …

He argued that failing to deal with the deficit would not be progressive because it would hit confidence and that would have an impact on jobs while interest rates would spike, hitting people who depended on low rates for their “livelihoods”.

“I say this with such urgency because I think what’s happening, bluntly, among the kind of centre-left community is a huge mistake – in thinking that even tackling the fiscal crisis is somehow an unprogressive thing to do. Not tackling it would be a greater betrayal of our progressive ideals.”

You can read the full report here.