GEORGE Osborne has been told by Labour's Alistair Darling that he would be a fool to start celebrating Britain's economic recovery just yet as the nation's finances are still in difficulty, but is being urged by fellow Cabinet Minister Ken Clarke to "stick to Plan A".
The Chancellor has declared on the back of improved growth figures and upgraded forecasts that Britain is "turning the corner", while Prime Minister David Cameron this week goaded Ed Miliband, telling the Labour leader he had lost the economic argument on austerity and Plan B would have failed.
Earlier this week, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, warned against complacency - interpreted as a slapdown to Mr Osborne - yet admitted that "we have the beginnings of a recovery story".
Yesterday, his Liberal Democrat colleague Nick Clegg said an economic "dawn appears to be breaking", claiming this would not be happening if it were not for his party being in the Coalition government.
Ahead of his party's annual conference in Glasgow this weekend, the Deputy Prime Minister underlined the need to guard against complacency but said things were "moving in the right direction" helped by his party's decision to link up with the Conservatives.
But Mr Darling sought to inject even more caution, saying: "It would be foolish to break out the flags just yet."
He said: "There has been some encouraging data but, frankly, you can't base any economic forecast on a few weeks' data. If you look at the public finances, they're still in a difficult state."
Meanwhile, Ken Clarke, the former Tory Chancellor, told a Westminster lunch that while the economy was on the up, there would be "bumps in the road" and Mr Osborne was "not being triumphalist".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article