The warning couldn’t have been more timely. When all else is failing, David Cameron and George Osborne have always banked on the economy to see them through. We can expect to hear of little else for the next week. “The long-term plan is working,” they insist; don’t let Labour ruin it. Boris Johnson, the man waiting to take Cameron’s job, even claimed last weekend that “the economy is going gangbusters”.
Presumably he was relying on the fact that even if it’s scarcely booming, the British economy has at least been growing after years of slump and stagnation. But the signs are it’s all starting to fall apart again. Quarterly growth has now been revealed to have halved to 0.3% in the first three months of the year. Production is down, construction is down.
Related: Coalition has presided over plunge in living standards, says TUC
Clegg has made absolutely clear his preference for another coalition with the Tories
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