Harriet Harman says Obama wrong on UK’s economic recovery

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/19/harman-obama-wrong-uk-economy-recovery

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Labour’s deputy leader said Barack Obama was wrong to suggest the British economy was recovering in a way that had benefited most people.

Harriet Harman’s comments came ahead of a new commitment from David Cameron to put full employment at the heart of his re-election campaign. He will say on Monday that the UK has become the jobs factory of Europe, and promise to triple the number of start-up loans, with at least £300m of loan capital being made available.

But Harman contested Obama’s characterisation of the British economy in a joint article with Cameron before the prime minister’s visit to Washington last week. Speaking on BBC Sunday Politics she said: “I think he’s wrong in that he’s not reflecting the fact that although the economy is back in growth, that growth is not being felt by people and it’s a recovery that is being accompanied by a stagnation in living standards, and that’s why we’re saying that people are no better off, the recovery hasn’t reached their front door and the economy is not working for everyday people. It’s just working for a few people at the top, and I’m sure President Obama, if he heard me say that, would agree with me.”

It is unusual for a Labour leader to criticise a Democratic party president, and may reflect a frustration at the lack of personal ties between the current White House and the Miliband team. There has been an attempt by the Conservatives to claim the US president and Cameron are at one over economic recovery, pointing particularly to Obama’s claim last week at a joint press conference with the prime minister that the two economies were creating jobs and must be doing something right.

In his speech, Cameron will commit to tripling the number of start-up loans to at least 75,000 by the end of the next parliament, indicating on current trends the scheme will have created at least 100,000 jobs by 2020. The programme provides small loans (on average £5k-£6k) to people who would struggle to secure credit via banks or building societies because of a lack of collateral.